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The worth of citation rates

Citation rates are often used as a measure of the quality and quantity of research carried out by scientists and institutes. They can determine fund allocation for grant applications, play a part in which journals researchers decide to publish their work in and even influence where scientists choose to work in terms of organisation and country.

However, some are calling into question the use of citation rates as determining factors in the assessment of performance. This is especially pertinent since the Higher Education Funding Council for England recently announced that the assessment and funding of science-based disciplines will now be based on citation rates per paper, aggregated for each subject group at each institution {1}.

In a recent letter published in Nature {2}, the author suggests that the use of citation rates in determining funding hinders research in developing countries. It is argued that in such countries, researchers are often forced to publish their findings in national journals as a result of local legislation. Such journals rarely feature in the most-cited rankings and lack impact and readership on an international level.

A second letter, also published in the same volume of Nature {3}, goes on to say that poor practices by authors reduce the worth of citation rates. This piece highlights that citation rates can be altered by excessive citation of an author's own work, inappropriate citation of irrelevant papers, and geographical and language biases, as well as groups of authors forming 'citation coalitions'.

This is why the F1000 factor is such a useful indicator of a paper's worth - it is a weighted average with positive bias based on the number of evaluations an article receives, as well as the ratings of those evaluations.

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Posted by Sean Porazinski on Thursday Jan 31, 2008, Category: Impact factor versus... | Permalink