Re: Science Citation Index

[Michael Barr <barr@math.mcgill.ca>]

I am responding to Vaughan's long message (which I won't bother
repeating).  The AMS has set up its own citation index but we have seen
that they too will not include TAC (I am not sure about Cahiers).  They
have a long-standing and apparently immutable prejudice against category
theory and nothing can change that.  As for a field as small as category
theory setting up its own index, that would seem to be a non-starter.
Even if we were to do it, the bureaucrats of the EC would not accept since
it would be seen as self-serving.

After reading that the Springer journal Homeopathy is indexed, I began to
wonder if the publisher pays ISI for inclusion.  I am sure that this kind
of information is kept secret.  (Actually, Robert Dawson has wildly
exaggerated the publication of Homeopathy: the truth is that one out of
every 10^{100} numbers contains one pixel of ink and the remaining issues
are blank.)