Re: Science Citation Index

Re: Science Citation Index

[Michael Barr]

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.)

Re: Science Citation Index

[jim stasheff]

Vaughan Pratt wrote:
> The thing I don't understand about citation indexes is, what is the
> barrier to entry here?
Time and energy?

jim

Re: Science Citation Index

[Vaughan Pratt]

The thing I don't understand about citation indexes is, what is the
barrier to entry here?  For any field naturally associated to a
university department (physics, mathematics, chemistry, history,
English), what is to stop that field deciding that in the interest of
fairness to all professionals working in the field whose work is subject
to review, for example junior faculty, it is going to run its own
citation index subscribing to a set of technical and ethical standards
that it makes public and holds itself to, e.g. via ISO 9000
certification?  It then actively works to promote the use of its index
by reviewing bodies, in competition with the existing citation indexes
run for profit.

Usually reviewers in any given field are reluctant to confess to
depending on citation indexes as a labor saving device.  However when a
field has acknowledged the efficiency of doing so and has set up an
adequately run index serving that need, and a review states that the
only citation index if any resorted to by the reviewer was the field's
own, the credibility of that review is enhanced even though the reviewer
has not stated whether he or she actually used that index.

Reviewers should not be asked to reveal actual use of an index because
that information could prejudice users of the review against reviewees
whose reviewers felt the need to resort to an index, since that could be
taken as a sign of non-notability, of questionable relevance to a
reviewee's performance.  Obviously one wants to hire and retain the most
famous people, but they've all gone to the highest bidder.  More
significantly, fields lose credibility in the eyes of other fields when
they put notability ahead of competence.  Most of all, they lose
effectiveness when they do not give due credit to researchers whose low
profile keeps them below the radar of reviewers yet who are nonetheless
valuable players.  MVP can mean either most valuable player or most
visible player, and these need not always be the same thing in subjects
that don't have 80,000 readers of each and every scientific article.

Because the field's index is working for the benefit of the field more
than for its own profit, it can and should maintain two-way contact with
those working in the field, by encouraging them to contribute suitably
formatted information listing and classifying their identifiable
contributions, as an extension of their CV.  In this way CV's need no
longer be isolated documents but instead become coordinated with the
field's index, whose maintenance becomes the joint responsibility of the
researcher and the index.  This divides the labor that hitherto has had
to be duplicated to a considerable degree at both ends, potentially
halving the cost of this part of the review process.

Done properly, these field indexes will consume resources of course, but
these can be underwritten in the same way that the for-profit indexes
make their money, namely by charging for them at rates competitive with
the established indexes, but with the additional edge of being
supplemented by subsidies from the homes of the appointment and
promotion committees whose work will in consequence be of a higher
quality than it presently is today and who therefore can reasonably make
that case to their provost or HR department.

Many fields already maintain their own indexes, which should in
principle be relatively easy to upgrade to the standards suggested here
compared to having to start from scratch, to the extent that the field
is adequately coordinated with the indexes it considers itself to be
operating.  An index purportedly serving a field that is not responsive
to the field's membership should be disowned by the field and an index
competing with it set up.  Such a threat should motivate any field's
existing indexes that can see which side their bread is buttered on to
play ball.

There is the tricky question of what to do with multiple established
indexes operated independently but at least nominally under a field's
control.  One approach is to select one of them as the one responsible
for the functions proposed here, but if they are complementary then some
sort of coordination between them producing an effect sufficient for
those purposes may be a better solution, as being less disruptive to
their complementarity, whose benefits should be clear to all duality
theorists.

Once a field's index has been accepted by an institution, and becomes
the primary if not only reference for all who need to consult such
indexes, the institution's library need feel under no obligation to
maintain their subscriptions to competing indexes serving that field.
The above-mentioned institutional subsidies can then be drawn at least
in part from those savings, an added efficiency of this system.

Indexes run according to these principles should strongly incentivize
all who stand to benefit from their quality to contribute to that
quality according to their roles.

The extant indexes can complain all they want about uncompetitive
practices, but at bottom they are the ones who brought this unwanted
competition on themselves by operating an inferior product.  Pragmatic
governments do not legislate in competition with Darwin's law of
survival of the fittest because in economics that law trumps all others.
  Governments that legislate at odds with Darwin's law fall victim to
it, as we saw with Russia.  Western civilization has not intentionally
legislated against the interests of fair competition for a long time
now, preferring to legislate against unfair competition by imposing
tariffs (the bludgeon), passing antitrust laws (the rapier), etc.

Vaughan Pratt

Re: Science Citation Index

[Giuseppe Longo]

On Friday 05 December 2008, Tim Porter wrote:
> On the subject of the ISI citation index, 
:
:
> It may be that the EMS and AMS should start a ridicularising campaign.  

Mathematical Structures in Computer Science (MSCS), a Cambridge UP journal, is 
soon going to publish an Editors' note:  Bibliometrics and the curators of 
orthodoxy
ftp://ftp.di.ens.fr/pub/users/longo/editorsMSCS.pdf

This firm critique of Bibliometrics contains also references to several 
documents on the  issue, in particular an excellent text by the Intermational 
Mathematics Union.
Best
 
 Giuseppe Longo 
Editro-in-chief
http://www.di.ens.fr/users/longo 

Science Citation Index

[R Brown]

There is also available the report from the IMU as follows:

http://www.mathunion.org/publications/report/citationstatistics/

It should be emphasised  that the ethics and practice of citation for an
individual paper are unclear and probably untaught, except possibly through
the admonishments of editors. Certainly scholarship in itself is generally
unrewarded. What gets the most fame is a solution to a famous problem; and
this is partly because the judgement of the achievement is easy, and could
almost be set up as a computer program, as for tennis rankings. Opening new
areas, or problem formulation, gives a more difficult task to assess: as
they say, predicting the future has its problems. And it may take many years
or decades for the true implications to sink in.

Should a citation be to the original paper, or to the most recent and
possibly best exposition (the latest author has the advantage of someone
else doing the spadework)? There is always an attraction in citing a famous
author, which gives a certain cachet, even if the idea came from someone
relatively unknown. There is the practice of changing terminology, so that
the original paper looks old fashioned, and in any case dealt with oomla
when `everyone' nowadays calls it bamloo.

How far back in the history of an idea or technique should citations go?

There is no established framework for good practice in citations dealing
with all these matters.

Thus the idea of using citations as a basis for assessment of importance is
hazardous in the extreme. This is emphasised in the IMU report.

Will the national Mathematical Societies be prepared to speak out publicly
on these key issues; or be willing to beard the Thomson/ISI lion; or subject
the basis of what ISI call `Essential Science' to ridicule; or state
publicly that the ISI journal evaluation process has little open quality
assurance?

Ronnie

Re: Science Citation Index

[jim stasheff]

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
>>
>>
>
>
>

Re: Science Citation Index

[Pedro Resende]

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
>
>

Re: Science Citation Index

[jim stasheff]

Ronnie,

The AMS staff shoudl be doing this.
May I forward your msg to them
or just suggest they get on the ball?

jim

 Brown wrote:
> Dear All, 
>
> I did some investigation on this in 2003, but never got round to writing an article for the Notices AMS as was proposed. 
>
> I wrote to journals on the EMS list and asked their opinion of ISI. Some of the opinions were quite scathing. As Michael notes, dealing with ISI is like hitting a blank wall. 
>
> What ISI are trying to do is a little like Readers Digest: as ISI claim, they give the `Essential Science'. In practice, it seems they quickly put on their list journals from publishers (Homeopathy; Chaos, Solitons, Fractals;. ...) but put up all sorts of barriers to new independent journals. What does this show about the real aims of ISI? 
>
> They claim to have an assessment procedure for new journals, but what this procedure is remains undisclosed. 
>
> More discussion is given by Richard Poynder: 
>
> I wrote about this topic recently (http://poynder.blogspot.com/2008/11/open-access-question-of-quality_21.html). 
>
> This might also interest you, as it suggests there is a growing perception of the need to move beyond the impact factor:
>
>
> http://scienceblogs.com/clock/2008/11/why_does_impact_factor_persist.php
>
> It is not in ISI interests to take on more journals (more work, what reward?). It may be that they are using old technology (pre-Google?). 
>
> I looked on the Thomsons/ISI board once and found no academic representation. It is not clear that they have the expertise to do the job they claim to do. Unfortunately, many countreis accept their claims, and it is administratively convenient so to do. 
>
> A report by Charles Goldie for the LMS writes:
>
> " The last few paragraphs suggest one general point, not specific to mathematics, that I hope the CMS response can take up, which is that the citation studies planned by HEFCE to be its main indicators depend on data from a private overseas corporation with no responsi­bility to the UK whatsoever. The way the data are organised by the Thomson Corporation (choice of fields, selection of journals for inclusion, allocation to fields) has considerable prior consequences for what it is feasible to do with the data, and hence for what indicators HEFCE or their agents might wish to employ. For the research future of this country to be determined to a large extent in this way is absolutely craven, and seems to me simply shame­ful." 
>
> Thus there is considerable doubt that ISI are doing what could be called a professional academic job, though it might be called `professional' if the aim is simply to make money from data organised in a  way whose toxic potentiality is not easily open to view. 
>
> Charles  wrote to me:
>
> "As you'll see, part of what I found was that Thomson Scientific's
> classification of journals into fields has no coherence or logic.
> Algebra Colloquium is classed as Applied Mathematics!"
>
> The other point is that `great oaks from little acorns grow'. A new but vital area may have little `impact factor'. ISI procedures, and their acceptance for research evaluation,  are unfavourable to new initiatives, and trends. 
>
> Unfortunately, the discussion of how mathematics progresses, and how new ideas grow, the context, is not usually part of the study of mathematics for students, and my impression is there is little developed language to cope with this. (Music degrees allow for study of performance, musicology, composition, ..Can we learn from this?) See discussion in various articles on
> www.bangor.ac.uk/r.brown/publar.html
> particularly perhaps `The methodology of mathematics'. Comments and argument welcome! But I have found the views of `top people' (in the UK, FRS's) can be very naive, the `Groupoids is rubbish' school of thought, or `the van Kampen programme is a ridiculous programme', etc., etc. 
>
> If anyone would like more information to pursue this ISI matter, I am happy to help. My problem is that I have some writing priorities and am a bit too old to divert my attention too much. 
>
> But obviously it is bad news for the progress of mathematics if the EC is taken in by what ISI themselves say they do, rather than by an analysis of what they actually do. Please forward this to the EC if it might help!
>
> Ronnie
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>   

Re: Science Citation Index

[jim stasheff]

Andrej Bauer wrote:
> In many countries, Slovenia included, the SCI is used in a formal way
> in government funding decisions, as well as in decisions about
> promotions at our university. My colleagues and I in Ljubljana simply
> must publish in journals that are on the SCI index, otherwise the
> publication is hardly recognized at all ('8 points' for top half of
> SCI versus '2 points' for being in Math Reviews). To add insult to
> injury practically all journals on SCI are of the kind that steals our
> work, funded by public money, and resells it back to the public.
> Nobody is even attempting to explain to the government what the
> problem is.
>
> If anyone has a plan on how to break the grip, I would like to hear it.
>

The AMS should be taking up this cause.
Has anyone tried to interest them?

jim

> So even if I wrote papers in category theory, I would/could not
> publish them in TAC because it is not in SCI.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Andrej
>
>
>

Re: Science Citation Index

[Tim Porter]

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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Re: Science Citation Index

[Hans-E. Porst]

This isn't really surprising: it is just another hint, that it is
easier to get a weak journal - published by a commercial publisher -
on the ISI list than a strong one, if the latter is published
independently.

Hans-E. Porst


Am 04.12.2008 um 15:22 schrieb Robert J. MacG. Dawson:

> John Baez wrote:
>
>> 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.
>
> 	That would be the one with one character per issue printed among 128
> blank sheets, right?
>
> 	-Robert Dawson
>

-- 
Hans-E. Porst                                 porst@math.uni-bremen.de
FB 3: Mathematics                               Phone: +49 421 21863701
University of Bremen                            Secr.: +49 421 21863700
D-28334 Bremen                                  Fax:   +49 421 2184856

Re: Science Citation Index

[Joachim Kock]

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
----------------------------------------------------------------

Re: Science Citation Index

[Andrej Bauer]

In many countries, Slovenia included, the SCI is used in a formal way
in government funding decisions, as well as in decisions about
promotions at our university. My colleagues and I in Ljubljana simply
must publish in journals that are on the SCI index, otherwise the
publication is hardly recognized at all ('8 points' for top half of
SCI versus '2 points' for being in Math Reviews). To add insult to
injury practically all journals on SCI are of the kind that steals our
work, funded by public money, and resells it back to the public.
Nobody is even attempting to explain to the government what the
problem is.

If anyone has a plan on how to break the grip, I would like to hear it.

So even if I wrote papers in category theory, I would/could not
publish them in TAC because it is not in SCI.

Best regards,

Andrej

Re: Science Citation Index

[R Brown]

Dear All, 

I did some investigation on this in 2003, but never got round to writing an article for the Notices AMS as was proposed. 

I wrote to journals on the EMS list and asked their opinion of ISI. Some of the opinions were quite scathing. As Michael notes, dealing with ISI is like hitting a blank wall. 

What ISI are trying to do is a little like Readers Digest: as ISI claim, they give the `Essential Science'. In practice, it seems they quickly put on their list journals from publishers (Homeopathy; Chaos, Solitons, Fractals;. ...) but put up all sorts of barriers to new independent journals. What does this show about the real aims of ISI? 

They claim to have an assessment procedure for new journals, but what this procedure is remains undisclosed. 

More discussion is given by Richard Poynder: 

I wrote about this topic recently (http://poynder.blogspot.com/2008/11/open-access-question-of-quality_21.html). 

This might also interest you, as it suggests there is a growing perception of the need to move beyond the impact factor:


http://scienceblogs.com/clock/2008/11/why_does_impact_factor_persist.php

It is not in ISI interests to take on more journals (more work, what reward?). It may be that they are using old technology (pre-Google?). 

I looked on the Thomsons/ISI board once and found no academic representation. It is not clear that they have the expertise to do the job they claim to do. Unfortunately, many countreis accept their claims, and it is administratively convenient so to do. 

A report by Charles Goldie for the LMS writes:

" The last few paragraphs suggest one general point, not specific to mathematics, that I hope the CMS response can take up, which is that the citation studies planned by HEFCE to be its main indicators depend on data from a private overseas corporation with no responsi­bility to the UK whatsoever. The way the data are organised by the Thomson Corporation (choice of fields, selection of journals for inclusion, allocation to fields) has considerable prior consequences for what it is feasible to do with the data, and hence for what indicators HEFCE or their agents might wish to employ. For the research future of this country to be determined to a large extent in this way is absolutely craven, and seems to me simply shame­ful." 

Thus there is considerable doubt that ISI are doing what could be called a professional academic job, though it might be called `professional' if the aim is simply to make money from data organised in a  way whose toxic potentiality is not easily open to view. 

Charles  wrote to me:

"As you'll see, part of what I found was that Thomson Scientific's
classification of journals into fields has no coherence or logic.
Algebra Colloquium is classed as Applied Mathematics!"

The other point is that `great oaks from little acorns grow'. A new but vital area may have little `impact factor'. ISI procedures, and their acceptance for research evaluation,  are unfavourable to new initiatives, and trends. 

Unfortunately, the discussion of how mathematics progresses, and how new ideas grow, the context, is not usually part of the study of mathematics for students, and my impression is there is little developed language to cope with this. (Music degrees allow for study of performance, musicology, composition, ..Can we learn from this?) See discussion in various articles on
www.bangor.ac.uk/r.brown/publar.html
particularly perhaps `The methodology of mathematics'. Comments and argument welcome! But I have found the views of `top people' (in the UK, FRS's) can be very naive, the `Groupoids is rubbish' school of thought, or `the van Kampen programme is a ridiculous programme', etc., etc. 

If anyone would like more information to pursue this ISI matter, I am happy to help. My problem is that I have some writing priorities and am a bit too old to divert my attention too much. 

But obviously it is bad news for the progress of mathematics if the EC is taken in by what ISI themselves say they do, rather than by an analysis of what they actually do. Please forward this to the EC if it might help!

Ronnie

Re: Science Citation Index

[Michael Mislove]

[Note from moderator: For information, as publisher I have twice suggested
TAC to Thomson. Three years ago it was rejected after a long delay with no
explanation other than a reference to their "policy". When the suggestion
was renewed last summer via email and their web site mentioned below I
received no response at all, not even an acknowledgement, certainly no
gift card.]

Dear Colleagues,
   I wrote Thomson and asked how to find out what's covered, and also
how to request a journal be included. Below is a copy of the response
I received. I checked, and neither Cahiers nor T&AC are included (nor
is ENTCS, sad to say). I also took a brief look at the leading essay
on the ISI site about their rationalization for their selection
process. The bottom line in my view is that they provide this service
not for our needs, but for those who want quick and dirty guesstimates
of the importance of publications. Administrators like to use such
rankings, and publishers also focus on them, citing impact factor as a
major aspect of the importance of journals they publish. We can all go
to the site listed below to request that Cahiers and T&AC (and don't
forget ENTCS!!) be included, but I'm afraid this community is too
small to have an impact (sic) on this industry, so I think we should
look elsewhere for the needs we have to be met. Of course, there is
the lure of that $50 American Express gift card....
   Best regards,
   Mike Mislove

>
> From: ts.cts-ps@thomson.com
> Date: December 4, 2008 10:35:11 AM CST
> To: mislove@tulane.edu
> Subject: RE: Web of Science Journal Coverage CASE 254481
>
> Dear Michael Mislove:
>
> Thank you for contacting Thomson Reuters Technical Support.
>
> For information on our journal coverage, please go to http://scientific.thomsonreuters.com/mjl/
>
> On the "Master Journal List", please see "Journal Lists for
> Searchable Databases" to see product-specific coverage.
>
> For information on our journal selection process, please go to http://thomsonreuters.com/business_units/scientific/free/essays/journalselection/
>
> To recommend a journal for coverage , please go to http://scientific.thomsonreuters.com/info/journalrec/
>
> If you are the publisher of the journal and wish to submit the
> journal for coverage, please go to http://scientific.thomsonreuters.com/info/journalsubmission/
>
>
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> American Express Gift Cheque please complete our brief customer
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> Customer Technical Support Representative
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> +1 800.336.4474
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> return e-mail and delete this e-mail and any attachments.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>


On Dec 3, 2008, at 11:23 AM, 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
>

===============================================
Professor Michael Mislove        Phone: +1 504 862-3441
Department of Mathematics      FAX:     +1 504 865-5063
Tulane University       URL: http://www.math.tulane.edu/~mwm
New Orleans, LA 70118 USA
===============================================

Re: Science Citation Index

[Michael Barr]

On Thu, 4 Dec 2008, jim stasheff wrote:

> Michael,
>
> at least in the old days,
> multiauthor papers were listed only once
> e.g. Milnor and Stasheff
> only under Milnor
>
> jim

I haven't looked recently, but that was the way it was when I used it.  It
was a way of finding where a subject had gone, not who had led it there.
This is a total misuse of the index.

Michael

Re: Science Citation Index

[jim stasheff]

George,

Has anyone brought this to the attention of MR?

jim
 Janelidze wrote:
> Dear Colleagues,
>
> I think John asks a very good question! However:
>
> While the Thomson Scientific's "Science Citation Index" could be related to
> some commercial matters that I do not understand, Mathematical Reviews in
> just Mathematical Reviews,
>
> and for each of us it has "Author Profile",
>
> and among other things it gives you the total number of citations on your
> papers,
>
> and if you click on "Citations", it lists citations,
>
> and below the list there is "Reference List Journals",
>
> and if you click on that, you will see a lot of journal titles,
>
> but not "Theory and Applications of Categories", not "Cahiers", and not
> "Applied Categorical Structures".
>
> That is, according to Mathematical Reviews, the citations in Category Theory
> journals are not citations!
>
> I am sure this is not what Mathematical Reviews really wanted to do, and
> that it must be corrected first of all.
>
> George Janelidze
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "John Baez" <john.c.baez@gmail.com>
> To: <categories@mta.ca>
> Sent: Wednesday, December 03, 2008 7:23 PM
> Subject: categories: Science Citation Index
>
>
>
>> 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
>>
>
>
>
>

Re: Science Citation Index

[Michael Barr]

Considering the AMS's attitude to category theory, I assume that this is
what they meant to do.

Michael

On Thu, 4 Dec 2008, George Janelidze wrote:

> Dear Colleagues,
>
> I think John asks a very good question! However:
>
> While the Thomson Scientific's "Science Citation Index" could be related to
> some commercial matters that I do not understand, Mathematical Reviews in
> just Mathematical Reviews,
>
> and for each of us it has "Author Profile",
>
> and among other things it gives you the total number of citations on your
> papers,
>
> and if you click on "Citations", it lists citations,
>
> and below the list there is "Reference List Journals",
>
> and if you click on that, you will see a lot of journal titles,
>
> but not "Theory and Applications of Categories", not "Cahiers", and not
> "Applied Categorical Structures".
>
> That is, according to Mathematical Reviews, the citations in Category Theory
> journals are not citations!
>
> I am sure this is not what Mathematical Reviews really wanted to do, and
> that it must be corrected first of all.
>
> George Janelidze
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "John Baez" <john.c.baez@gmail.com>
> To: <categories@mta.ca>
> Sent: Wednesday, December 03, 2008 7:23 PM
> Subject: categories: Science Citation Index
>
>
>> 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
>
>
>

Re: Science Citation Index

[jim stasheff]

Michael,

at least in the old days,
multiauthor papers were listed only once
e.g. Milnor and Stasheff
only under Milnor

jim
 Barr wrote:
> Don't know about Cahiers, but Bob has repeatedly tried to get them to
> index TAC and it is like hitting a blank wall.
>
> The editors of Mathematical Structures in Computer Science have just sent
> a very strong letter to the EC which has decided to use the citation
> indices (there are apparently more than one) in a formal way.  The
> American editors seemed to say, that they were used very little for
> tenure
> or hiring purposes in the US and, to my knowledge (from tenure decisions
> at McGill but at least in the early 90s never used by the main granting
> agencies.
>
> But above and beyond that, there was a time when I was actually using the
> citation index for its stated purpose.  It was when I was starting my
> work
> on duality and I wanted to know to what extent the Pontrjagin duality had
> been extended to classes of topological abelian groups larger than
> that of
> locally compact groups.  Every useful for that, but not if it
> gratuitously omits certain journals.
>
> One of the strongest points made is that the citations often go to
> derivative works rather than the original.  This is not malice on the
> part
> of authors; often the derivative source is simply a better, clearer,
> whatever, source than the original.
>
> In a similar way, you cannot judge a mathematician from the number of his
> students.  Gauss had only 8 students, and four of them, including
> three of
> the best known (Dedekind, Sopie Germain, and Riemann had exactly none).
> But he has, in toto, close to 45,000 descendants, over 70% of whom were
> descendants of someone named Christain Gerling, whom I had never heard of
> until I just looked it up.  My guess is that most of us are descended
> from
> Gauss (I am).  Gustav Herglotz had 1278 descendants nearly all of whom
> descend from one student: Emil Artin (my doktorgrandfather).
>
> My point is that these things are simply not decent measures of value or
> influence.  The ISI is useful for some things and useless for others,
> including making this kind of judgment.  That's what people are good at.
>
> Michael
>
>
> On Wed, 3 Dec 2008, 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
>>
>>
>
>

Re: Science Citation Index

[Robert J. MacG. Dawson]

John Baez wrote:

> 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.

	That would be the one with one character per issue printed among 128
blank sheets, right?

	-Robert Dawson

Re: Science Citation Index

[George Janelidze]

Dear Colleagues,

I think John asks a very good question! However:

While the Thomson Scientific's "Science Citation Index" could be related to
some commercial matters that I do not understand, Mathematical Reviews in
just Mathematical Reviews,

and for each of us it has "Author Profile",

and among other things it gives you the total number of citations on your
papers,

and if you click on "Citations", it lists citations,

and below the list there is "Reference List Journals",

and if you click on that, you will see a lot of journal titles,

but not "Theory and Applications of Categories", not "Cahiers", and not
"Applied Categorical Structures".

That is, according to Mathematical Reviews, the citations in Category Theory
journals are not citations!

I am sure this is not what Mathematical Reviews really wanted to do, and
that it must be corrected first of all.

George Janelidze


----- Original Message -----
From: "John Baez" <john.c.baez@gmail.com>
To: <categories@mta.ca>
Sent: Wednesday, December 03, 2008 7:23 PM
Subject: categories: Science Citation Index


> 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

Re: Science Citation Index

[Patrik Eklund]

Probably is and probably isn't.

I wrote a paper some years ago which eventually was published and the
journal is SCI listed. Our paper contained some keyword like monads and
n-categories and stuff, and we liked the paper, we still do. The reviewers
didn't always, but the editor eventually took the decision. In
correspondence with the editor it was like "... even if only a few in the
world will understand, it is not a reason not to publish ...". I should
say that the editor (thanks again!, if you read this, and my apologies for
using our correspondence as an example) saw the potential for
applications as well, which the reviewers did not.

Once in a while I communicate within the most theoretical communicates. I
feel humble and I realize how little I know, and I want to build upon
that. On the other hand, I want to build things that are useful, that
improves the world around me a little bit further. And I want to combine
the two!

Certainly, and please do not stand up and go just yet, certainly
categorists are doing great and also very very useful things. But simply,
is it enough? Can we do more? Do we reach out?

Why are computations efficient? Because we have grids. Why do aeroplanes
fly. Because we have matrices. And so on. It would be nice to hear
something like: How did we save global economy? With categories.

By the way, can anyone point at some category theory success stories, that
could be explained in evening news?

Patrik



On Wed, 3 Dec 2008, 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
>
>

Re: Science Citation Index

[Michael Barr]

Don't know about Cahiers, but Bob has repeatedly tried to get them to
index TAC and it is like hitting a blank wall.

The editors of Mathematical Structures in Computer Science have just sent
a very strong letter to the EC which has decided to use the citation
indices (there are apparently more than one) in a formal way.  The
American editors seemed to say, that they were used very little for tenure
or hiring purposes in the US and, to my knowledge (from tenure decisions
at McGill but at least in the early 90s never used by the main granting
agencies.

But above and beyond that, there was a time when I was actually using the
citation index for its stated purpose.  It was when I was starting my work
on duality and I wanted to know to what extent the Pontrjagin duality had
been extended to classes of topological abelian groups larger than that of
locally compact groups.  Every useful for that, but not if it
gratuitously omits certain journals.

One of the strongest points made is that the citations often go to
derivative works rather than the original.  This is not malice on the part
of authors; often the derivative source is simply a better, clearer,
whatever, source than the original.

In a similar way, you cannot judge a mathematician from the number of his
students.  Gauss had only 8 students, and four of them, including three of
the best known (Dedekind, Sopie Germain, and Riemann had exactly none).
But he has, in toto, close to 45,000 descendants, over 70% of whom were
descendants of someone named Christain Gerling, whom I had never heard of
until I just looked it up.  My guess is that most of us are descended from
Gauss (I am).  Gustav Herglotz had 1278 descendants nearly all of whom
descend from one student: Emil Artin (my doktorgrandfather).

My point is that these things are simply not decent measures of value or
influence.  The ISI is useful for some things and useless for others,
including making this kind of judgment.  That's what people are good at.

Michael


On Wed, 3 Dec 2008, 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
>
>

Science Citation Index

[John Baez]

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