Wednesday, 12 October 2005

The Fine Art of Self-Citation; or, "Impact Factors" and the Mathematical Proof of One's Importance

This article on "impact factors" compels me to pull this cheap stunt.  If the most prestigious journals in the hard sciences—those pure-minded publications whose interests do not include the coddling of insecure scholars and the inflation of their own importance as is the case in the soft sciences and humanities—are encouraged to practice the fine art of self-citation in order to drive up their "impact factor," what prevents a humble blogger like me from doing the same?  In other words, this isn't considered unethical in the scientific community:

But the policy has done just that, and quite successfully, according to the The Chronicle's analysis of self-citations to one-year-old articles — which are important in the impact calculation. In 1997 the Journal of Applied Ecology cited its own one-year-old articles 30 times. By 2004 that number had grown to 91 citations, a 200-percent increase.

Therefore, it shouldn't be unethical for a blogger to puff his (now ostentatiously) humble chest.  Surely nothing I say ranks in importance anywhere near anything published in The New England Journal of Medicine, the Annual Review of Immunology or the Cancer Journal for Clinicians.  And yet all of those publications feel the need to inflate their patent importance by citing recently published articles again and again and again and again.  With importance being predicated on the appearance of importance, why worry about the ethical dilemma of choking off the availability of vital—literally "vital," as in the Latin vita, meaning "life"—research in a library which subscribes to journals based on their "impact factor."  An important journal of cardiology, one keyed to specialists, may not be available in a research library because its impact factor ranks far below that of the specialist journals.  [Update: Stephen Karlson pushes this logic a little further here.]

From whence does my righteous indignation against the high impact factor generalist journal spring?  I'm not sure.  But my life would be easier if UCI subscribed to the Jack London Journal. 

Oct 12, 2005 9:34:43 PM | Academia, Dissertation, Evolution, From the Archives, Literature, Shameless Self-Promotion, Weblogs

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Scott Eric Kaufman

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