Re: Science Citation Index

[Tim Porter <t.porter@bangor.ac.uk>]

On the subject of the ISI citation index, I wonder if what is being  
done is consistent with anti-trust laws in the USA and with fair  
competition laws in the EU. The refusal of Thomson's to accept  
reputable journals and also to justify their refusal looks to me to be  
suspect on legal grounds.  Does any one know of any legal challenges  
to this.

It may be that the EMS and AMS should start a ridicularising campaign.  
  Public money n many countries is going to a so-called service that  
is not being performed at a professional level.

Tim





Quoting 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.
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------
> 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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