Dear Colleagues, The discussion on citation indices is interesting and important, but may I protest a bit?: Of course we all know that it does not make sense to judge mathematicians by numbers of publications and/or citations. But it does not mean that the number (and the list) of citations on your and my papers given in Mathematical Reviews should be the number (and the list) of citations in non-category-theory journals! Therefore the task number one here is not to argue about general improvements of various indices, but to convince Mathematical Reviews to include TAC, Cahiers, and APCS in what Mathematical Reviews calls "Reference List Journals". Jim, any success? If it is as bad as Michael Barr says, well, it least we will know that we made an attempt - and then, who knows, may be Categorical Reviews will be created one day... Next, if you allow me to propose task number two, it could be to try again (using MR) to include the same journals to various lists including Thompson's list (APCS is already there though) - not because it will help us to judge ourselves and each other, but simply because there are those funny bureaucratic requirements of many universities in many countries. George Janelidze
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
George, I'vwe had a prompt reply from Ewing on the general issue so far none from MR will try again jim Janelidze wrote:
Dear Colleagues,
The discussion on citation indices is interesting and important, but may I protest a bit?:
Of course we all know that it does not make sense to judge mathematicians by numbers of publications and/or citations. But it does not mean that the number (and the list) of citations on your and my papers given in Mathematical Reviews should be
the number (and the list) of citations in non-category-theory journals!
Therefore the task number one here is not to argue about general improvements of various indices, but to convince Mathematical Reviews to include TAC, Cahiers, and APCS in what Mathematical Reviews calls "Reference List Journals". Jim, any success?
If it is as bad as Michael Barr says, well, it least we will know that we made an attempt - and then, who knows, may be Categorical Reviews will be created one day...
Next, if you allow me to propose task number two, it could be to try again (using MR) to include the same journals to various lists including Thompson's list (APCS is already there though) - not because it will help us to judge ourselves and each other, but simply because there are those funny bureaucratic requirements of many universities in many countries.
George Janelidze
participants (3)
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George Janelidze -
jim stasheff -
Jonathan_CHICHE_