Re: Science Citation Index

[Joachim Kock <kock@mat.uab.cat>]

Hello category theorists,

just to report that in Spain, Thomson's Science Citation Index is now
the main measure of quality of publication in mathematics: every report
and application has to indicate impact factor(*) and citation count(**) of 
all one's papers -- and papers in journals not indexed (or in conference
proceedings) simply don't count as papers!  As a concrete example, I
received last year an evalutation from the Ministry of Science and
Education explicitly telling me that I need to improve the number of
papers published in indexed journals.

(*) Impact factor is really a silly measure for quality: for example
many learned societies distribute papers into several different journals
only according to length but using otherwise the same criteria for
acceptance, whereas those different journals can have very different
impact factors in Thomson's index.  (It may interest some of you that
the Elsevier journal CHAOS SOLITONS & FRACTALS edited by El Naschie has a 
higher impact factor than Annals of Mathematics.)

(**) Of course the citation count is Thomson's count, which counts only
citations from Thomson indexed papers, and even fails to identify
preprint citations to papers later indexed.  (E.g. paper A cites preprint
B.  When B is published in an indexed journal the citation from A does
not count.)

It has a very bad effect, especially on young researchers, who have to
follow the rules of Thomson's and Ministry's game, and look up impact
factors before choosing which journal to submit to, instead of following
scientific criteria.


Furthermore, access to Thomson's database is not free.  (The Spanish
Ministry has paid access for all Spanish universities, instead of using
that money to fund research.)  It is more than likely that Thomson is
affiliated in some way with Elsevier and other publishing houses -- in
any case they share the same goals of extracting money from science
budgets -- and therefore free journals represent a threat, and it is not
very likely that any free electronical journal will be included in
Thomson's index.  It did happen with 'Geometry & Topology', though...

I agree with George that it is important to get TAC and Cahiers into the
AMS citation database.  This should be possible just by scientific
reasons.  Before that happens I think there is not much hope to enter
Thomson's index...

The real problem is to convince science foundations and other funding
agencies to boycott Thomson.  Just getting more and more good journals
into Thomson's index is not going to help with that :-(

Gettting the categories journals into the AMS citation database will
help providing a strong alternative to Thomson.

Cheers,
Joachim.

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Joachim Kock <kock@mat.uab.cat>
Departament de Matemàtiques -- Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
Edifici C -- 08193 Bellaterra (Barcelona) -- ESPANYA
Phone: +34 93 581 25 34        Fax: +34 93 581 27 90
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