CiteScore–Flawed But Still A Game Changer
The real innovation of CiteScore is not another performance metric, but a new marketing model focused on editors.
Peering across the Copyright DMZ
A new book reviews various instances of piracy in the media industry and proposes using Big Data analyses as a means to manage it.
Is Publication Success a Matter of Dumb Luck?
Researchers may publish their best work at any point in their careers, a new study reports. This is not the same as success being the result of random forces or just plain “dumb luck.”
Visualizing Citation Cartels
Citation network maps may indicate when gaming is taking place. Proving intention is a different story.
How to Manipulate a Citation Histogram
Citation indexes need to provide standardized citation histograms for editors and publishers. Without them, it is unlikely that they will be widely adopted. At worse, it will encourage the production of histograms that selectively highlight or obscure the data.
Optical Illusions — Shifting to Citation Distributions Only Makes It Easier to Fool the Eye
A proposal to substitute graphs of citation distributions for impact factors introduces many problems the authors don’t seem to have fully grasped, including unintentionally bolstering the importance of the very metric they seek to diminish.
Citation Networks Yield Competitive Intelligence
Citation networks can provide much more than journal metrics and rankings. Publishers should look to them for competitive intelligence.
On Moose and Medians (Or Why We Are Stuck With The Impact Factor)
If Thomson Reuters can calculate Impact Factors and Eigenfactors, why can’t they deliver a simple median score?
Citable Items: The Contested Impact Factor Denominator
Thomson Reuters’ approach of indexing by journal section and revising by demand leads to great inconsistencies across journals and inflates the Impact Factors of elite journals. The solution: remove the human element.
Celebrating Five Years of Altmetrics
Charlie Rapple reports on the 2:AM conference, which celebrated five years of altmetrics and considered what we should aspire to achieve in the next five years
Seeing the Forest (Plot) for the Trees
Clean, data rich, and intuitive, forest plots can be used to visualize publication metrics.
Altmetrics and Research Assessment: How Not to Let History Repeat Itself
Criticisms of altmetrics often seem to be equally applicable to other forms of research assessment, like the Impact Factor. Phill Jones suggests that is not because of a fundamental opposition to altmetrics but a fear that it will suffer the same pitfalls. The solution is to engage more with a somewhat neglected set of stakeholders; Informaticians.
If We don’t Know What Citations Mean, What Does it Mean when We Count Them?
There is no shortage of critique of citation metrics and other efforts to quantify the “impact” of scholarship. Will a report calling for “responsible metrics” help researchers, administrators and funders finally wean themselves?
When Do Citations Reflect "Impact?"
Citation practices vary between and within STM and HSS; they also vary by discipline and within disciplines. Though citation metrics presume evidence of “impact,” in fact a citation may represent a range of intentions. Given the emphasis on citation indices, isn’t it important to query what scholars are actually doing when they cite another scholar’s work?
Why are Authors Citing Older Papers?
Scholars are citing an increasingly aging collection of scholarship. Does this reflect the growing ease with accessing the literature, or a structural shift in the way science is funded–and the way scientists are rewarded?