Today I found last month's copy of 'Information World Review' ( see http://www.iwr.co.uk/ )which has arrived free mysteriously through the post since I visited the Library and Information show about seven years ago. I had been looking for it because I remembered there was a good article there 'Numbers Game Hots up' by Tracey Caldwell, which I wanted to read at leisure.
Citation Metrics are something that every good Academic Librarian needs to know about. If they don't affect your life at the moment they will soon.
Now there are other products available which provide indicators of how much a work influences readers. Google Scholar is free and details of new journals are updated using automated technology, which is instant.
Another product is the new 'H index' in Scopus from Elsevier. This provides metrics for journal articles as far back as 1996. New journals are regularly added each year. The product has extra tools to help with disambiguation of authors names etc. which are not available in the Google Scholar. The founder argues that if a paper is cited often it should be considered significant in evaluations even if it does not appear in a high impact journal.
Scopus measures some things that other methods do not. for instance conference proceedings, arguing that;
There is a new journal ranking body called Eigenfactor which measures download statistics.
It is not only the funding bodies who are interested in people's citations ;
"20% of [Scopus's] researchers searches of its system were to do with people evaluating themselves, their peers and competitors.[3]"
Cognitive scientist and open access (OA) evangelist Steven Harnad is quoted as saying "The candidate metrics must go beyond just ISI journal impact factors, or even article/author citation counts. Non-ISI citation data (such as Google Scholar, ) download data and many other candidate metrics should be tested and validated against the RAE 2008 panel reviews, discipline by discipline.[4]" He points out that once Open Access self-archiving becomes mandatory a new set of Open Access metrics will be available too. [the disadvantage of using some of these sources is that they have not been submitted to peer reviews, as journals are.]
Citation Metrics are something that every good Academic Librarian needs to know about. If they don't affect your life at the moment they will soon.
"Journal impact factors, or IFs, measure how often science and social science journals are cited by academics. The measurement of the number of times a journal is cited by researchers in the field has become shorthand for the value of that journal; and funding bodies and employers use citation metrics to assess the productivity of institutions, departments and individuals,[1]."
writes ms Caldwell
Later on the same page she adds:
"Citation metrics are also used to produce the H Index (a measure of an individual's publishing activity. Crucially, citation metrics will also be used to inform the funding of higher education research under the Research Excellence Framework (REF)."
Thompson Scientific's 'Web of Science' is a well established resource which indexes citations. It is the most used online resource in most UK universitites. But it is expensive and critics argue that it is not a good way to measure how much work is read, since the publication cycle is slow and it takes years before an article is cited many times. Measuring achievement this way is biased in favour of periodicals which have already built up a good readership, and it will be hard for new periodicals to attract submissions.Now there are other products available which provide indicators of how much a work influences readers. Google Scholar is free and details of new journals are updated using automated technology, which is instant.
Another product is the new 'H index' in Scopus from Elsevier. This provides metrics for journal articles as far back as 1996. New journals are regularly added each year. The product has extra tools to help with disambiguation of authors names etc. which are not available in the Google Scholar. The founder argues that if a paper is cited often it should be considered significant in evaluations even if it does not appear in a high impact journal.
Scopus measures some things that other methods do not. for instance conference proceedings, arguing that;
"in some disciplines such as science and maths it has been shown that 50-60% of research results are in conference proceedings; while in the arts and humanities most research is in a book, not in papers or conference proceedings.[2]"
There is a new journal ranking body called Eigenfactor which measures download statistics.
It is not only the funding bodies who are interested in people's citations ;
"20% of [Scopus's] researchers searches of its system were to do with people evaluating themselves, their peers and competitors.[3]"
An insert in p. 16 entitled "Funding Factor: Metrics and UK Research budgets" explains
that in 2008 there will be a Research Excellence Framework which will follow [i.e. replace? I don't understand] the current Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) 2008 funding programme.
The Higher Education Council of England (HEFCE) "acknowledges there are limitations to a metrics-based approach but says it intends to counter the drawbacks by using a wide range of metrics. It is also careful to say that its appplication of quantitive metrics does not entail the grading or ranking of journal titles (journal impact factors,) nor or individual researchers."
This would seem to be the opposite of everything stated in the above article, which is rather confusing. I must ask my boss, who regularly attends meetings on the subject, to explain this to me.
Cognitive scientist and open access (OA) evangelist Steven Harnad is quoted as saying "The candidate metrics must go beyond just ISI journal impact factors, or even article/author citation counts. Non-ISI citation data (such as Google Scholar, ) download data and many other candidate metrics should be tested and validated against the RAE 2008 panel reviews, discipline by discipline.[4]" He points out that once Open Access self-archiving becomes mandatory a new set of Open Access metrics will be available too. [the disadvantage of using some of these sources is that they have not been submitted to peer reviews, as journals are.]
In many Universities the libraries are involved in the process of gathering evidence for the RAE and I have heard it suggested often that librarians should become experts in accessing information related to citation metrics so that they can gather information, train others and join in the debate.
ps. 5/3/2008 I see in the current issue that Scopyus citation database has just added 600 new titles to the 15,000 journals that they already index[5].
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Footnotes:
1. Tracey Caldwell "Numbers Game Hots up" in Information World Review, February 2008 issue 243 p. 14
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Footnotes:
1. Tracey Caldwell "Numbers Game Hots up" in Information World Review, February 2008 issue 243 p. 14
2. ibid. p.16
3. ibid. p.15
There is a shortened version of Tracey Caldwell's article on the web at http://www.iwr.co.uk/information-world-review/features/2208954/numbers-game-hots-3774199 accessed 30/02/2008
4."Funding Factor: Metrics and UK Research budgets" in Information World Review, February 2008 p. 16
5. "Scopus packs in another 600 titles" in Information World Review, March 2008 issue 244 p.03
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