A longer paper gathers more citations : Nature News

From Nature 455, 274-275 (2008):

Researchers could garner more citations simply by making their papers longer, a study seems to imply (K. Z. Stanek, Preprint at https://arxiv.org/abs/0809.0692; 2008).

In an analysis of 30,027 peer-reviewed papers published between 2000 and 2004 in top astronomy journals, astronomer Krzysztof Stanek of Ohio State University in Columbus found that the median number of citations increases with the length of the paper — from just 6 for papers of 2–3 pages to about 50 for 50-page papers.

There is, however, a limit to the benefits of size: citations start to tail off when papers reach lengths of 80 pages or so, perhaps because fewer people have the stamina to read them.

It is unexpected, says astronomer Jörg Dietrich of the European Southern Observatory headquarters in Germany, who recently conducted a similar analysis and found the same results but didn’t publish them. “I expected that shorter papers would be cited more than longer ones,” he says. “I assumed that people don’t have the time to read long papers.”

Papers of about 4 pages — the length of Letters in Astrophysical Journal and Astronomy and Astrophysics, which report brief summaries of work that is usually published in more detail later — fare better than papers 5–10 pages long. But brevity offers no such benefit for papers in the other two journals considered, Astronomical Journal and Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, which do not have Letters.

Andreas Trabesinger, a senior editor at Nature Physics, writes in News and Views this month (Nature Physics 4, 677; 2008):

“The past is by no means definite. It is rather open”, wrote the German historian of science Ernst Peter Fischer in Die Welt on 24 July 2006. In his column, Fischer introduced the “zeroth theorem of the history of science”; a discovery named after a person, the theorem says, did not originate from that person.

Take, for example, Avogadro’s number, named after Amedeo Avogadro, who asserted that there is the same number of molecules contained in a given volume of any gas at the same temperature and pressure. However, it was not the Italian savant who first estimated that number, but the Austrian scientist Johann Josef Loschmidt. Indeed, German-language texts sometimes refer to the number 6.022 1023 as ’Loschmidt’s number’. Much depends on who tells a story, and where and when. Fischer sees his zeroth theorem as an invitation to look with fresh eyes at the history of science, and in particular at how discoveries got their names.

That thought has now been picked up by J. David Jackson (Am. J. Phys. 76, 704–719; 2008). He has explored five examples from physics that illustrate Fischer’s zeroth theorem, and discusses the broader issue of credit-giving, and where it gives rise to inappropriate attributions. Jackson’s five examples take in various areas of physics, from the Dirac delta function to the Weizsäcker–Williams method of virtual quanta, to the Bargmann–Michel–Telegdi equation of spin dynamics. The journey includes encounters with big names such as Enrico Fermi or Nikola Tesla, but also with physicists whose biographies are far less commonly known, such as Oliver Heaviside, Llewellyn Thomas or Emil Wiechert. Their names are famous in some specific contexts, but little is known about their complete works."

Read more of the article at this link.

The International Mathematical Union has released a report on the use of citations in assessing research quality. The report, Citation Statistics, is written from a mathematical perspective and strongly cautions against the over-reliance on citation statistics such as impact factor and h-index. The belief that these parameters are accurate, objective and simple, is unfounded.

It states that the objectivity of citations is illusory because the meaning of citations is not well-understood. Its meaning can be very far from ‘impact’. Although having a single number to judge quality is indeed simple, it can lead to a shallow understanding of something as complicated as research. Numbers are not inherently superior to sound judgments.

The report, written by mathematicians, promotes the sensible use of citation statistics in evaluating research and points out several common misuses of this widespread application of mathematics. The authors of the report recognize that assessment must be practical and that easily-derived citation statistics will be part of the process, but caution that citations provide only a limited and incomplete view of research quality. Research is too important, they say, for its value to be measured with only a single coarse tool.

(This is a precis of the press release accompanying publication of the report, see links above.)

Further discussion of the report, together with other matters related to citation and quality metrics, is taking place online at the Nature Network Citation in Science group, which all are welcome to join.

Debbie Chaves of Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Ontario writes in Correspondence in the current issue of Nature (Nature 453, 719; 2008):

In his Correspondence ‘Hall and Keynes join Arbor in the citation indexes’ (Nature 452, 282; 2008 – see also Nautilus), Daniel Postellon describes the distinguished careers of Milton Keynes, Walton Hall and Ann Arbor. In the last case, I note that Professor Arbor has an h-index of 1 from the Web of Science database provided by Thomson Scientific’s ISI Web of Knowledge. This is based on her five citations for the year 2007: two articles, two letters and one abstract.

An author search in the Web of Science reveals that Chevy Chase MD (not to be confused with Chevy Chase, Maryland) has co-authored a letter with Howard Kaplan (H. Kaplan Am. Sci. 96, 3; 2008). My own institution, Wilfrid Laurier University, is also an author (S. Cadell et al. J. Palliat. Care 23, 273–279; 2007).

Irrespective of how these errors are created, the rising use of systems in which citation information moves directly from the search of a database or citation index to a bibliographic management system, and then into a reference list, means that inexperienced students and researchers who are not savvy enough to detect these errors will propagate them further.

Vigilance is required by all users of citation indexes and databases.

Daniel C. Postellon of the Helen DeVos Children’s Hospital, Michigan, writes in Nature’s Correspondence pages (Nature 452, 282; 2008):

The career of the non-existent author Ann Arbor is well-known to connoisseurs of computerized databases and citation indexes. Usually listed as the last author, she is sometimes credited with the academic degree “MI”. Ann is not actually a person, but the city of Ann Arbor, Michigan, home of the University of Michigan. Her ‘degree’ is a misinterpretation of the abbreviation for Michigan: MI. She pre-dates online computerized databases, and was often listed in the paper edition of Index Medicus.

Ms Arbor now has a UK rival in the team of Walton Hall and Milton Keynes. Like her, they are usually listed as last authors. The online database Google Scholar lists them as co-authors of 46 publications, in addition to their solo work. Walton Hall is actually a building on the campus of the Open University in Milton Keynes. These ‘authors’ have a useful role to play: they can be used to check the accuracy of the databases and indexes.