This remark is quite off-topic for this list, yet may be taken into account by those members who want to take action about this ranking issue. The situation is somewhat similar within other fields of knowledge and is not limited to science. Indeed, I attended a literature colloquium a few weeks ago, during which there was a short talk dealing with this topic. The speaker, apparently reacting to a decision which applies to European researchers in his field, described a society in which researchers, in order to be well-ranked, would ask their relatives and friends to click frantically on their names and articles in Google, then pay people to do that fulltime to get higher ranks (in developing countries to reduce the cost). A reknown critic and professor, quite influential (at least here in France), replied that it was perfectly justified to use ranking methods because these had proved efficient in the field of "pure sciences". (I do not remember the words she used.) Unfortunately, I was too abashed to answer. The reason why I am writing this is that I think researchers should take interdisciplinary action, if any. Indeed, this issue is more sociological or political than scientific, and therefore I am not sure mathematicians have the power to address it on their own. Regards, Jonathan