Re: Science Citation Index

[jim stasheff <jds@math.upenn.edu>]

Pedro,

It's just so easy for a bureaucrat to be able to back up an arbitrary
decison by
pointing to an `impact factor'

jim

 Resende wrote:
> 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
>>
>>
>
>
>