Re: Science Citation Index

[Pedro Resende <pmr@math.ist.utl.pt>]

As an example of how some governments may indeed be tempted to use ISI
information for tenure and promotion decision, Iet me mention what
happened in Portugal some years ago. There was a short-lived social-
democrat government in Portugal whose science minister (a professor
from IST's mechanical engineering department) proposed to base the
evaluation of scientific production on a simple formula. The formula
originally included niceties such as requiring every scientist,
whatever his field, to publish an average of four papers per year ---
ranging from social sciences to chemistry (!!!) More, these papers
were supposed to be published in ISI cited papers.

A series of fierce complaints from the portuguese scientific community
followed, in an attempt at least to fix the formula by providing
realistic expectations regarding average numbers of publications
according to field. The requirement that publications be ISI-indexed
was probably going to be retained, though, except that the government
was short-lived and the whole evaluation system was swiftly (and
fortunately) replaced by a more effective peer review system.

About that time I learned from Ronnie Brown that he had had some
correspondence with Eugene Garfield (the founder of ISI) and in
particular had mentioned to him how SCI seemed to be used in some
countries in order to assess scientific production. Garfield's reply
was crisp and clear: "The SCI was not designed for that
purpose" (these may not have been the exact words, but it was the
spirit as far as I remember).

Why some governments will insist on (mis)using such a commercial tool
is not completely clear. My guess is that in some cases this is a
consequence of lack of understanding of how science works, on the part
some political decision makers. Certainly the need to cut on expenses
must play a role, too.

Best,
Pedro.


On Dec 3, 2008, at 5:23 PM, John Baez wrote:

> Dear category theorists -
>
> Thomson Scientific runs the well-known "Science Citation Index", which
> "provides researchers, administrators, faculty, and students with
> quick,
> powerful access to the bibliographic and citation information they
> need to
> find relevant, comprehensive research data".  I believe data from
> this index
> is used in tenure and promotion decisions at some universities.
>
> I just heard that "Theory and Applications of Categories" and
> "Cahiers" are
> not listed on the Science Citation Index, while - for example -
> Elsevier's
> journal "Homeopathy" is listed there.
>
> Is this true?  Is there some way to improve the situation?
>
> Best,
> jb
>
>