Lasting Legacies - USM Forum -- Message Board

Date: Jul 10, 2006

Lasting Legacies

Date: Jul 10, 2006

Google Scholar is a neat innovation. Unfortunately, it gives the user no real information about the quality of those outlets in which a particular researcher publishes.

Date: Jul 10, 2006

Google Scholar wrote:

I stumbled across a great site called Google Scholar that lists all publications for individuals as well as the number of times the publications have been cited.

I wouldn't say "all." I tried it with my own name as guinea pig and found considerably fewer publications and reports than I know about. Given Google's track record, I imagine that this site will get better, but it's pretty recent and therefore incomplete.

JL

Date: Jul 10, 2006

stackable media wrote:

Google Scholar is a neat innovation. Unfortunately, it gives the user no real information about the quality of those outlets in which a particular researcher publishes.

Well, you could always try ISI's "Science Citation Index", which is generally considered the optimal assessment of a scientific article's "relevance" to its discipline. The USM Library had it in hard-copy, but it may be searchable on-line, too.

Date: Jul 10, 2006

I found the Google site to be reasonable accurate, it had about 10 more than I was aware of. One encounters the same problem with this site that occurs with the Social Science Citation Index is sorting out your cites from others with the same name or first two initials. It will be interesting to see if SSC will continue to able to charge libraries for the same information that Google provides for free.

Date: Jul 10, 2006

You are definately a star, Cossack, with over 20 times the citations of your esteemed president!

Date: Jul 10, 2006

Thank you Wowser,

Compared to real stars, I more resemble a burned out comet. My research is dated.

Date: Jul 10, 2006

Try ISI web of science via USM libraries website (databases by title). You can do a cited author search.

Date: Jul 10, 2006

just coasting wrote:

Try ISI web of science via USM libraries website (databases by title). You can do a cited author search.

I believe the ISI WoS is the new name for the old SSCI.

Date: Jul 10, 2006

ISI web of science is a much better way to search for number of citations in Science Citation Index. I will agree that he is not the most cited researcher in the world, he does at least have 16 pubs with more than a dozen times cited (the number the original poster picked). He has 1 with 125, 1 with 50, 7 with 30-20, and 7 with 19-12. I discounted 2 relatively highly cited papers dealing with cancer screening (probably different SF Thames), but the rest looked like his work.

Date: Jul 10, 2006

Depree chose to compare research productivity in the College of Business this week. Citation comparisons are very interesting in that college. For example, Frank Mixon's most influential paper, as measured by citations by this source, is 17, Tom Lindley's is 190, and Barry Babin's is 233. I think I said over 300 in my other post, blame dyslexia.

Date: Jul 10, 2006

Here a penny, there a penny wrote:

Depree chose to compare research productivity in the College of Business this week. Citation comparisons are very interesting in that college. For example, Frank Mixon's most influential paper, as measured by citations by this source, is 17, Tom Lindley's is 190, and Barry Babin's is 233. I think I said over 300 in my other post, blame dyslexia.

So we now want citations to count as the gold standard for impact? Perhaps for one manuscript.

One thing I can say for sure: Lindley, Babin, and Mixon all represent their research clearly on their vitas: journal articles, books, etc., all listed separately. This is in stark contrast to the CoB's fearless leader Doty, who has to lump journal articles in with presentations so that his "research" subheading will look appropriately "full" for someone who holds the rank of dean.

Date: Jul 10, 2006

Why not a simple matrix that would put all of this citation business to rest? Sum the products of publications times their individual citations. That would address both quantity (numbers of pubs) and quality (influence measured by citations) that folks seem concerned with. Departmental and college peers can then address the additional measures of quality such as publication rankings, research streams, or withstanding the test of time.

Date: Jul 10, 2006

Could even take it a step further to determine relative influence of an entire department.

Date: Jul 10, 2006

Citations alone are simply not a reliable reflection of quality. The author(s) who get there first may make an extremely marginal contribution yet be cited many times; a later piece may be clearly superior yet could have fewer citations. Citations show the impact of one article. I am not aware that anyone at USM has been tenured and promoted to full professor on the basis of one article.

Date: Jul 10, 2006

Sounds like you would prefer 50 pubs, each cited five times, to 5 pubs, each cited 50 times. A matrix might suggest they are the same, leaving further measures of quality to peers within a unit.

Date: Jul 10, 2006

A compromise? wrote:

Sounds like you would prefer 50 pubs, each cited five times, to 5 pubs, each cited 50 times. A matrix might suggest they are the same, leaving further measures of quality to peers within a unit.

Don't put words in my mouth. All I'm saying is that citations should not be considered a sign of quality. Citations may signal quality, but citations may also signal publishing in a faddish and fleeting area.

Date: Jul 10, 2006

That's an interesting point regarding fads. Without "putting words in your mouth", it sounds like an argument that a pub with lots of citations over a short time horizon would might not be as influential as one with steadily increased citations over a longer time horizon. So, 50 over three years then little or nothing for 7 would not be as good as 50 over 10 years with a continuing positive trajectory?

Date: Jul 10, 2006

A compromise? wrote:

That's an interesting point regarding fads. Without "putting words in your mouth", it sounds like an argument that a pub with lots of citations over a short time horizon would might not be as influential as one with steadily increased citations over a longer time horizon. So, 50 over three years then little or nothing for 7 would not be as good as 50 over 10 years with a continuing positive trajectory?

Here are some of my issues with counting citations:

Let's revisit the Babin example. He has 230 citations according to Google Scholar.

How many are self-cites?

How many are in unpublished works?

Since Babin and Darden are editors (were editors), how many times were they cited by authors in an effort to improve the authors’ publication chances by citing editors’ papers, especially favorably? Is this a sign of research quality or political power?

Finally, people who wrote that the earth was flat got cited a lot --- by those who set out to prove it was round. Do citations saying your work is crap mean you are a good researcher?

Citation analyses are difficult to perform. Simply counting citations is inappropriate.

Date: Jul 10, 2006

How would you define and measure the impact of an individual publication? An individual researcher? A unit?

Date: Jul 10, 2006

A compromise? wrote:

Could even take it a step further to determine relative influence of an entire department.

This is interesting, especially given the fact that Williams has made more money off of Babin's research than Babin has.

Date: Jul 11, 2006

What is really interesting is that some people in the COB who claim to be the top researchers appear to have had almost no impact on the field. Is it really true that the webmaster of USMpride has only been cited 4 times? Given the misleading and selfserving presentation of information on that website his lack of scholarly impact is easy to understand. When the cobmob were discovered to be without cloths, this website got very nasty in an effort to distract attention from a fairly objective and well accepted proxy for scholarly impact. While no measure of research impact is perfect, the results in this case appear to be clear. Babin appears to be the most influential scholar in the COB followed by Lindley. Mixon has potential, but to date doesn't appear to have published much that the field considers important. King has a well cited hit as do a few others. For a school like USM the overall number of cites isn't too bad, but everybody has room for improvement. Now why don't the cobsters go to bed so more important matters can be discussed.

Date: Jul 11, 2006

sickofcob, I'm not saying I disagree with your sentiments, but the newest update has some interesting stuff. The In-House journal melee really paints the CoB in a bad light. Dr. Thames and his successor should probably not provide as much raise money to the CoB as normal in future years. It seems to be throwing good money after bad looking at these outcomes.

Date: Jul 11, 2006

sickofcob wrote:

What is really interesting is that some people in the COB who claim to be the top researchers appear to have had almost no impact on the field. Is it really true that the webmaster of USMpride has only been cited 4 times? Given the misleading and selfserving presentation of information on that website his lack of scholarly impact is easy to understand. When the cobmob were discovered to be without cloths, this website got very nasty in an effort to distract attention from a fairly objective and well accepted proxy for scholarly impact. While no measure of research impact is perfect, the results in this case appear to be clear. Babin appears to be the most influential scholar in the COB followed by Lindley. Mixon has potential, but to date doesn't appear to have published much that the field considers important. King has a well cited hit as do a few others. For a school like USM the overall number of cites isn't too bad, but everybody has room for improvement. Now why don't the cobsters go to bed so more important matters can be discussed.

Again with the citations! Citations have been worth exactly zero for 20 years at the CoB, and now the Dotyites claim that citations are the only measure of quality? That's laughable.

Date: Jul 11, 2006

Wouldn't the normal progression of a scholar who publishes in a journal be to get asked to review ad hoc for that journal, then to serve on its review board and then, perhaps, to be its editor? Isn't that considered prestigious service to the Academy? Wouldn't reviewers and, especially, editors of high quality journals be considered assets to a department, college, and university? Wouldn't it help in recruiting faculty and building reputation? Don't good universities encourage this? Are the clobbers really saying this sort of scholarly contribution is subject to criticism?

Date: Jul 11, 2006

Must be a full moon wrote:

Wouldn't the normal progression of a scholar who publishes in a journal be to get asked to review ad hoc for that journal, then to serve on its review board and then, perhaps, to be its editor? Isn't that considered prestigious service to the Academy? Wouldn't reviewers and, especially, editors of high quality journals be considered assets to a department, college, and university? Wouldn't it help in recruiting faculty and building reputation? Don't good universities encourage this? Are the clobbers really saying this sort of scholarly contribution is subject to criticism?

Take a look at the In-House Journal report on www.usmpride.com. What is up for discussion is the large number of publications in one's own journal while one is an editor/member of the editorial board. Add to that the number of CoBers who hit these in-house journals for a large portion of their productivity.

You can't truly believe that there's not a problem when a journal editor consistently publishes his/her papers in his/her journal. Or have most of your publications been engineered?

Date: Jul 11, 2006

Is the goal of editorial service to have an "in" so that you can publish your own work over and over? Doty congratulated Zantow in an open forum for getting published in AMLE. He just as well could have said congrats, you published your own paper.

How about becoming an editor and not putting your own work in for review at that place? Go elsewhere with it and let it pass the test. Editing is about gatekeeping. Is it proper to judge the merits of your own work?

Date: Jul 11, 2006

Must be a full moon wrote:

Wouldn't the normal progression of a scholar who publishes in a journal be to get asked to review ad hoc for that journal, then to serve on its review board and then, perhaps, to be its editor? Isn't that considered prestigious service to the Academy? Wouldn't reviewers and, especially, editors of high quality journals be considered assets to a department, college, and university? Wouldn't it help in recruiting faculty and building reputation? Don't good universities encourage this? Are the clobbers really saying this sort of scholarly contribution is subject to criticism?

Another opinion: This is one of the most shallow, least thought out posts I have seen in a while. Of course this issue (to you) is clear -- cut and dried. You've got a wonderful future in CoB administration. Just don't think too much, or you'll end up being dean!

Date: Jul 11, 2006

spINdle wrote:

Or have most of your publications been engineered?
Engineered? Is that code for something? If so, I don't get it. People who are not well enough respected in their fields to serve on editorial review boards or to be editors probably don't have a good sense of the internal checks and balances of the journal.

Date: Jul 11, 2006

Must be a full moon wrote:

spINdle wrote: Or have most of your publications been engineered? Engineered? Is that code for something? If so, I don't get it. People who are not well enough respected in their fields to serve on editorial review boards or to be editors probably don't have a good sense of the internal checks and balances of the journal.

There is a plethora of literature in almost every field about the political aspects of publishing, such as editorial connections, etc. etc. Your talk about "internal checks and balances" is not worthy here.