Comments on: Eigenfactor

By: Using Eigenfactor to Measure Journal Ranking « Library & Information Centre@NIPER-S

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 09:37:44 +0000

[...] Read a more scholarly description of the Eigenfactor at http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2008/07/23/eigenfactor/ [...]

By: Anonymity Meets Aggression on Web 2.0 « The Scholarly Kitchen

Anonymity Meets Aggression on Web 2.0 « The Scholarly Kitchen — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 10:28:52 +0000

[...] Kitchen have been cordial, insightful, and constructive. It was a bit of a shock to get my first mean-spirited response to a post I made on the Eigenfactor. What differentiated this post from the rest was that the [...]

By: Richard Sever

Richard Sever — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 18:53:44 +0000

Your query about whether we need new tools for evaluating journals touches on the key issue here: not a given journal metric but journal metrics themselves. The Impact Factor is flawed, and we are right to decry its tyranny. New metrics will just produce other tyrants, however, with their own flaws (I can think of plenty in the case of a metric that counts citations in one periodical as being more important than citations in another). The real problem is our over-reliance on journal impact factors when assessing individuals and their papers. Those ranking candidates for tenure, etc. would do better to examine the merits of the papers themselves rather than cut corners by guesstimating this on the basis of a generalized journal metric – and then quibbling about which one is best.

By: Kent Anderson

Kent Anderson — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 16:23:17 +0000

Phil is right that the main point here is that free alternatives are emerging. As a recent paper stated (http://www.mathunion.org/fileadmin/IMU/Report/CitationStatistics.pdf), getting the numbers to match isn’t surprising at all: “This correlation is unremarkable, since all these variables are functions of the same basic phenomenon — publications.” If we’re all describing the same elephant, the real issue is which tool does it faster, more reliably, and less expensively. These new online tools seem to offer some distinct advantages.

By: anon

anon — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 15:30:53 +0000

my comments just got wiped out. That makes me mad. Your wee ditty above also makes me mad – please, read the literature about IFs from Garfield and all the rest before pontificating; read the literature to see how to analyse data and describe analyses (try Stringer et al in PLOS ONE for a strat); do some brief web search and find out there’s plenty mroe than just 2 tools out there. Cripes.