editorial boardissi-society.org/media/1188/newsletter11.pdfeditorial the role of our society in the...

© 2005-2007, International Society for Scientometrics and Informetrics (ISSI)

32

Editorial BoardEditor in chief:

Wolfgang GlänzelEditors:

Aparna BasuRonald RousseauLiwen Vaughan

Technical Editor:Balázs Schlemmer

Published By:ISSI

CONTENTS

Editorial (R. Rousseau) ................. 32

11th ISSI conference (CINDOC) ... 33

Price awardee of 2007 (interview) Katherine W. McCain ........ 37

The 12th Nordic Workshop(B.Larsen et al.) ......................... 41

Cha-cha-cha Informetrics(R. Rousseau) ........................... 43

Lack of Consequence in NamingUniversities in EnglishRuins their Reputations(M. Kosmulski) .......................... 46

EDITORIAL

The role of our society in the organisation ofthe international conferences on scientometricsand informetrics

It has been a great pleasurefor me, as newly elected presi-dent of the society, to meet somany colleagues at the 11thISSI conference in Madrid. Yet,for those among you who un-fortunately were not able tomake it to Spain, this issue

contains a short report on everything that hap-pened. Twenty years ago, in 1987, Leo Egghe'sbrainchild was born, and today we are still goingstrong: stronger than ever I may say.

I take this opportunity to elaborate on aquestion raised by some colleagues wanting toorganise an international conference onscientometrics and informetrics. I have beenasked sometimes about the role of ISSI, giventhat the society does not provide money for theorganization of such conferences.

Indeed, ISSI does not provide conferenceorganizers with material help. Yet, it does provideanother type of support. ISSI provides aframework, a structure so that conferences oninformetrics are not scattered efforts, but form aregular series of related events. Moreover, ISSIacts as a watchdog. It ensures the overall qualityof this series of conferences. Most importantly,for what concerns local organizers, ISSI offersthem a vote of confidence when its board ac-


33

cepts a proposal for organizing a future event.Last June Isabel Gómez and her team, organi-zers of the 11th ISSI conference in Madrid, haveamply shown that they deserved this vote ofconfidence. On behalf of the board and of myselfI thank them for their efforts and congratulatethem on the results.

Now the vote of confidence has been given to AbelPacker and his Brazilian team for 2009 and to DennisOcholla and his South African group for 2011 (tobe confirmed in 2009). Expectations are high!

Ronald RousseauPresident of ISSI

11TH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE OFTHE INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY FOR

SCIENTOMETRICS AND INFORMETRICSMADRID, SPAIN, JUNE 25-27, 2007

Isabel Gómez,María Bordons,Isidro F. Aguillo

(CINDOC-CSIC)

The Spanish Scientific Research Council (CSIC)hosted the 11th ISSI Conference that took placein Madrid last June (25-27) in the CSIC centralcampus. The conference halls of three researchinstitutes, together with the Residencia deEstudiantes and its gardens, were open tocolleagues from all over the world interested inScientometrics and Informetrics. The CINDOCgroups on bibliometrics and cibermetrics, witha long tradition attending previous ISSIConferences, were in charge of organizing the2007 Conference.

The geographical position of Spain, the won-derful weather in June and the Madrid amenitiesattracted a large number of delegates, one hun-dred more than in the previous ISSI meeting in2005. This is very relevant as many face to faceencounters were possible, especially for new-comers. The physical restraints were minimal,being the major one the impossibility of havingall the posters together; so unfortunately eachone was on show only one day.

The acceptance rate was guided by qualityover all other reasons. Henk Moed as ProgrammeChair was responsible for the process of selectingthe oral presentations and organising them into


34

different thematic sessions, as well as inviting thekeynote speakers of the opening session. EdNoyons was in charge of the poster sessions.Around 60 specialists of the InternationalScientific Committee participated in the peerreview process. As a whole, about one third ofthe proposals were rejected, and the finalprogramme consisted of 92 oral presentationsand 77 posters.

The topics were surprisingly well delimited, somost of the sessions were homogeneousenough to avoid "migration" to parallel sessions.The plenary session was brilliant. A specialmention is due to Stevan Harnad, who masterlypresented his invited talk on Open Access andwho was available during the full event. Asinvited speakers we also had Eugene Garfieldfrom Thomson-ISI and Ruediger Klein from theESF. The quality of the presentations in thescientific sessions was in general good, withsome weaknesses: not every final versionsubmitted was as good as expected from theabstracts, but the general feeling is that thequality is improving year after year. Nevertheless,according to several attendees, the fewpresentations on patents and webometrics weresomewhat disappointing. Good news for thosenot attending the Conference is that theProceedings (two thick volumes) cover all thematerial presented, including even the keynotes.

The pre- and post-conference sessions werevery interesting. The Doctoral Forum, orga-nised for the second time by Rickard Danelland Birger Larsen, allowed young researchersto present their preliminary results in a smallroom to high-level scholars who commentedfrom their experience. The two Post-confe-rence Workshops, under the responsibility ofPeter Ingwersen, were well organised and thequality of their papers was comparable to themain event. They focused on the use of CVfor evaluation purposes and on InformationVisualization.

One of the main objectives for the organizerswas to contribute to the integration of theSpanish scientometrician community and thatwas a success, as 68 colleagues (including somestudents who helped in the organisation), camefrom Spain (27% of the total!). A total of 40countries were represented including several first


35

ones. Ten scientists received some kind offinancial support to attend the Conference,following the tradition established for ISSIConferences.

During the social event -dinner in the beautifulcity of Toledo (not Ohio but the original one)-the Awards Ceremony took place. The Derek deSolla Price Medal 2007 of the journal Sciento-metrics went to Kate McCain (again DrexelUniversity), whereas the Eugene Garfield Doc-toral Dissertation Scholarship 2007 was grantedto Sonia Maria Ramos de Vasconcelos from theFederal University of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil.

Many people were involved in making this eventpossible. We want to warmly thank our ownorganization CSIC and our Institute CINDOC(particularly its manager) for their help andcontinuous support; the EyC enterprise whocarried the administrative load and madeeverything run smoothly; our sponsors fromSpain and abroad for their financial aid; and ofcourse the participants in the event for theirinteresting contributions and fruitful discussions.

As Conference Chairs, we were very happyto receive you all in Madrid, and we hope tomeet again in the next ISSI2009 in Brazil.

A FEW MOMENTS OF THE ISSI 2007 CONFERENCE(Photos by Wolfgang & Zsuzsanna Glänzel and Birger Larsen)


36


37

INTRODUCING THEDEREK DE SOLLA PRICE AWARDEE OF 2007

– interview by Balázs Schlemmer –

The awarding ceremony of theDerek de Solla Price MemorialMedal has become an essentialpart of the programme of ISSIconferences since the founda-tion of the Society in 1993. The PriceMedal was conceived and launched byTibor Braun, founder and Editor-in-Chief of the international journal Sci-entometrics, and is periodically award-ed by the journal to scientists with out-

* You can learn more about the award and award winners on the ISSI website: http://www.issi-society.info/price.html

standing contributions to thefields of quantitative studies ofscience. This year’s awardee isKATHERINE W. McCAIN (Collegeof Information Science and Tech-

nology, Drexel University, Philadelphia,USA). In accordance with the tradition,prof. dr. McCain received her Medalduring the conference dinner of the ISSI2007 conference in Madrid, Spain. Con-gratulations to the award-winner!

KATHERINE W. McCAIN

At the beginning of your scientific career you ob-tained a BS degree in zoology. A few years later, stillin zoology and marine biology, an MS degreefollowed. And then, "all of a sudden", you defendedyour PhD dissertation in information science. Howdid it all begin? How did you drift from scrutinizingSchizoporella unicornis under the microscope to theinvestigation of longitudinal cocited author mapping?Well, as I commented in my thanks, it was a bitconvoluted. As a marine biologist and natural historian,I'd been exposed to the importance of taxonomy andsystematics (scientific classification) in understandingthe organisms I was studying and also to the history ofscience and biology/evolutionary theory in particular.So I was pre-adapted to be an information scientist whostudies the life sciences. Not long after I completed myMS degree, my husband joined the EconomicsDepartment faculty of the City College of New York andI taught as an adjunct in the Biology Department at StatenIsland Community College. In 1976, after two years inNYC, we moved to Philadelphia, where my husbandwas on the faculty of the Economics Department ofTemple University. Within a few weeks of our settling in,the Temple University Library advertised for a para-professional (Bibliographic Assistant) to run the libraryin the Biology Department, and I took the job.

In 1977, the science librarian, Jim Bobick, attended apresentation at the Medical Library Associationconference discussing how citation analysis could beused in collection development decisions. So he

http://www.issi-society.info/price.html


38

assigned a research project to each of the depart-mental library BAs (Biology, Chemistry, Physics,Mathematics) - to do a citation analysis of the use ofjournals and other materials by our patrons. When Ihad completed my data gathering, I organized theresults as what I came to know a bit later as a "Bradforddistribution" and thought that was interesting. Jim wasan adjunct in what was then the School of Library &Information Science at Drexel and said that we shouldshow our results to Belver Griffith. So we did, and thenext thing I knew, in Fall 1980, I was in the PhD program.(The article reporting our results was published inJASIS in 1981.)

Belver taught a research seminar for doctoralstudents and assigned each of us to do some kind ofresearch project of our own choosing. I had beenattracted to the cool graphics of cocitation mappingand Howard White (my advisor) and Belver had justpublished their ACA paper in JASIS (on informationscientists). After some consultation with my husband,I decided to try to map Macroeconomics and wasfortunate to publish the results in Scientometrics in1983. I continued this work for my dissertation, addingDrosophila Genetics and splitting the study of eachinto two successive time periods. I also realized thatit would be good to find out how macroeconomistsand fly geneticists thought about their fields, so Isupplemented the bibliometric study with a combi-nation of interviews and card sorting. I interviewed anumber of macroeconomists and fly geneticists in theBoston-NY-Philadelphia area. The results were my dis-sertation and several articles.

Just out of curiosity, what were your basicfindings about this tiny little colonial animals namedSchizoporella unicornis?It was a basic descriptive natural history study – geo-graphic distribution, anatomy, etc. This species seemsto have been introduced several times in the PacificNW – probably as a fouling organism – from Japan.

(Fouling organismssettle and grow on thehulls of boats, any-thing that floats in thewater, tires hangingoff of docks, etc.) If Ihad continued this asa dissertation, I prob-ably would haveworked with the (then)new techniques ofgel electrophoresis tostudy genetic varia-tion in the various lo-cations.

Back to information science: what was your mostimportant publication? (Not necessarily the one withthe highest citation impact, but the one, which youare the most proud of, that is, your personalfavourite just because of the topic, the shrewdmethodology, the complexity of the research, etc.)That's really hard to say. A mother loves all her childrenequally. But I think I'm still proudest of the researchthat combines bibliometric (co-citation) and knowledgeelicitation (card sorting) methods as a way of validatingthe maps. I've done this twice formally – in my disser-tation and in a more recent Scientometrics paper onsoftware engineering. I don't think anyone had previ-ously applied KE methods in direct comparison toco-citation mapping.

Have you ever had a very surprising researchresult which was completely against yourpreliminary expectations?Perhaps the complete disconnect between informationscience and medical informatics that Ted Morris and Ifound when we did a co-cited journal mapping ofmedical informatics. But that wasn't nearly as surprisingto the MI folk as it was to us information scientists.Even now, a number of years later, there seem to beshared interests that don't show up in the literature.

Which one do you rather prefer: teaching orresearch? Do you happen to have a memorable storyfrom the classroom?I love teaching, but I'd have to give a slight edge toresearch. That's what keeps me going.

My most memorable classroom story has nothingto do with bibliometrics or scientometrics, however. Iused to teach a course called Serial Literature whichlooked at collection development, management, etc.of all kinds of serials (primarily print in those days).

Schizoporella unicornis (aka Single-Horn Bryozoan).Photo: © 2005, courtesy of Derek Holzapfel (http://www.naturediver.com).Reproduced with the written permission of the author.

http://www.naturediver.com


39

The class had several field trips includingone to ISI (just down the street) and oneto the local bindery. In preparation for thebindery trip, the company would send metheir videotape showing how journalswere bound. One year I ran the videotapein class and discovered that it was not"how journals were bound" but an in-company video of the annual trip toFlorida. Most of the video consisted ofmiddle aged people in bathing suitsstanding up in boats and drinking variousalcoholic beverages. Needless to say,that was memorable for me and thestudents – and the bindery which wassufficiently chagrined to give us lunch thatyear when we came for our field trip.

Let's take a closer look at thescientist behind science. How do yourcolleagues and/or students char-acterize you? And how do you refinethe picture?Wow – that's difficult. You shouldprobably ask them. If I had to guess, Ithink my colleagues think I'm bright,eclectic, collaborative, reliable, andvery high verbal. My students proba-bly think I'm bright, eclectic, very highverbal and pretty intimidating until theyget to know me (it's partly the coursesI teach). I take my teaching and re-search very seriously but try to keepthings light as well.

5 books, 5 CDs and 5 movies youwould take to a desert island with you...Books: Stephen J. Gould's "The Struc-ture of Evolutionary Theory," the latestedition of the one-volume Columbia En-cyclopedia, Tolstoy's "War and Peace"(I'd actually have time to read it), Whitta-ker's "Island Biogeography," and Dar-win's "The Voyage of the Beagle."CDs: Any edition of these Mozart ope-ras: The Magic Flute, Don Giovanni, TheMarriage of Figaro; Ella Fitzgerald &Joe Pass "Easy Living;" Blossom Dea-rie [Diva series]Movies: The Godfather 1&2, CitizenKane, The Maltese Falcon, Casablanca,Branaugh's version of Henry the Fifth.

I have seen on your website that oneof your hobbies is to locate and pho-tograph covered bridges. To be honest,it seemed to be a very strange leisuretime activity at first sight, but when Istarted to watch the photos and read thetexts around them, I realised that thesebridges are lovely, indeed. Nevertheless,"collecting" covered bridges remainsquite a unique hobby. Where did the ideacome from? And what's to be knownabout covered bridges in a nutshell?Well-it comes from the interests myhusband and I share in (1) driving aroundthe countryside and (2) industrial archae-ology (we also chase old canal systemsand old highways based on pre-1930road guides). It fits in well with bird watch-ing and wildflower/dragonfly & butterflyphotography as well.

In this country, covered bridges werebuilt from the late 1700s through the 1920sor 30s (and a few are being newly builttoday, in addition to older ones beingrenovated or rebuilt after arson fires,floods, etc.). I'm interested in the engi-neering aspects, the (sometimes but notalways) picturesque settings, and the funof discovering new places I haven'tbeen. The bridges are covered in orderto protect the structural elements – thetrusses and I'm interested in truss de-sign. Pennsylvania has the most co-vered bridges of any state and ParkCounty, Indiana has the most of any indi-vidual county. There are a number of stateand local organizations devoted to pre-serving this part of our architectural andtechnological heritage and you can getbrochures that will list bridges and illus-trate driving tours to visit them efficiently.

Could you mention a few of yourmost memorable conference (or otherjob-related) stories?The most memorable conference ex-perience was clearly the Madrid ISSImeeting where I was thrilled to receivethe Price Medal and to hear HowardWhite, my thesis advisor and colleague,say such nice things about me. My

Covered bridges.Photos: © Dr. Roger A. McCain(http://william-king.www.drexel.edu/top/bridge)Reproduced with the permission of the author.

http://william-king.www.drexel.edu/top/bridge


40

favorite conference session that I organized was proba-bly the ASIST conference in the mid-1980s where I ma-naged to get Belver Griffith, Patrick Wilson, and YaleBraunstein on a panel discussing issues in informationand intellectual property. I was a new assistant professorthen and, while Belver was just down the hall, the othertwo were really big names at Berkeley and I didn't knowthem at all. The attendance was remarkable, given that itwas on the last morning of the conference. And then therewas the one time I actually met Derek Price – Belverorganized an informal conference at Drexel with DerekPrice, Michael Moravcsik, Henry Small, possibly GeneGarfield, and Susan Crawford. It was really overwhelm-ing for a doctoral student to be in the same room with allof these people who were writing what I was reading!

What was the most embarrassing situation duringyour professional career? And the funniest?Embarassing? In terms of research, I've made a fewfaux pas in press-characterizing "spin glass" [Wiki-

pedia: “a disordered material exhibiting high magneticfrustration” – remark of the editor] as a kind of glass(Diana Hicks caught that one) and misspelling oeuvrein my 1984 JASIS article (can I blame the copy editorfor not fixing it?). I don't recall being embarrassed inperson (I've probably blocked that out). In teaching,the most embarrassing experience was the first term Itaught science reference. I forgot the day and time ofthe class and someone had to come find me. LuckilyI was in my office.

Funny? I don't know if it qualifies, but I once sub-mitted a paper to what I thought was a marine scienceslibrary conference and discovered, when I arrived,that it was a conference of fisheries researchers withone session devoted to information resources. It waskind of neat, actually, because I got to hang out againwith folks who wore blue jeans and had fish counterson their belts. I ended up publishing my presentationas a paper in the society journal.

Awarding ceremony at the ISSI 2007 conference in Madrid. Kate McCain (awardee), Isabel Gómez (conference organizer), Wolfgang Glänzel(ISSI secretary-treasurer) and Howard D. White (previous Price-awardee).

ISSI Newsletter is published by ISSI(http://www.issi-society.info/)

Contributors to the newsletter should contact the editorial board by email.

Wolfgang Glänzel: [email protected] | Ronald Rousseau: [email protected] | Liwen Vaughan: [email protected] Basu: [email protected] | Balázs Schlemmer: [email protected]

Accepted contributions are moderated by the board. Guidelines for contributors can be found athttp://www.issi-society.info/editorial.html

Opinions expressed by contributors to the Newsletter do not necessarily reflect the official position of ISSI. Although all published material isexpected to conform to ethical standards, no responsibility is assumed by ISSI and the Editorial Board for any injury and/or damage to personsor property as a matter of products liability, negligence or otherwise, or from any use or operation of any methods, products, instructions or ideas

contained in the material therein.

http://www.issi-society.info

mailto:[email protected]





http://www.issi-society.info/editorial.html


41

Bibliometric researchers in the Nordic countrieshave arranged annual workshops since 1996alternating between Finland, Sweden, Norwayand Denmark. The 2007 workshop was heldSeptember 13-14 at the Royal School of Libraryand Information Science in Copenhagen.

The purpose of the Nordic workshops is to presentrecent bibliometric research in the Nordic coun-tries and to create better linkages between thebibliometric research groups and their PhD stu-dents. Traditionally, there is no workshop fee andthe workshop language is English and open toparticipants from any nation. Following a dis-cussion at the 2006 workshop dinner efforts weremade to recruit a wider range of participants bothlocally and internationally. As a result the Call forPresentations was circulated on the main biblio-metric and professionally relevant mailing lists andin the ISSI Newsletter. The call was well receivedand we had the pleasure of hosting one of thelargest Nordic workshops to date with 17 accept-ed presentations and more than 40 registeredparticipants (full program: http://www.db.dk/nbw2007).Among them were researchers as far away asfrom Australia, Canada, USA, Belgium and the UK.The increase in the interest for bibliometric meth-ods as research policy tools was mirrored by alarger than usual attendance from a wide rangeof non-presenting participants with relations touniversity administration, particularly fromSweden and Denmark.

The Nordic workshops are traditionally of aninformal and interactive nature, often with plentyof feedback given to presenters both after, andoccasionally during, presentations. No papersare published, but the majority of the presenta-tions slides can be seen at the workshop home-page. The scope of the Nordic workshops is

THE 12TH NORDIC

WORKSHOP ON

BIBLIOMETRICS AND

RESEARCH POLICY IN

COPENHAGEN

by Birger Larsen,Lennart Björneborn

and Peter Ingwersen

http://www.db.dk/nbw2007


42

intentionally open and allows for preliminaryideas to be presented and discussed. Examplesof presentations that generated much debatewas Peder Olesen Larsen’s study of countingerrors in published publication and citationanalyses, Balázs Schlemmer’s study of Patternsand Characteristics of Highly Citedness inEurope, and Dag W. Aksnes’ thought-provokingstudy Does Self-citation Pay? Dr. GunnarSivertsen from NIFU STEP in Norway was thekeynote speaker. He presented an analysis ofdata from the Norwegian national system forallocation research funding in a study ofPublication patterns in complete bibliographicdata (all scientific journals and books) at allNorwegian universities. This interesting study isone the first to be based on such comprehensivedata and showed several interesting patterns.A natural debate arose on the use of these datafor allocation of research funding, especially theweights given to different types of publications.An interesting result is that the Medical andHumanities faculties of Oslo University receivethe same amount of funding from the model.

A particular tradition is that the workshopdinner is taken, to the extent that this is possible,at an island or near water, e.g., on a boat (Oulu2000), by a river (Turku/Åbo 2004) or at the keyside (Oslo 2006). Naturally situated on an islandCopenhagen provided a wide range of possibi-lities. The choice fell on Hansen’s Old Family Gar-den serving traditional Danish “smørrebrød”(open sandwiches with a variety of toppings)accompanied by the equally traditional selectionsof beer and snaps. Thus having had the dinneron water and by water in several variants leavesthe option of taking it under water. Perhaps this


43

can be fulfilled by next year's venue: Tampere inFinland, which beautifully situated between twolarge lakes. Going to Tampere for the first time,the 2008 workshop will be arranged by theTASTI Unit for Science, Technology and Inno-vation Studies and will take place sometime inSeptember 2008. Dates will be decided soonand be posted at http://www.db.dk/nbw2007, and

there will a Call for Presentations in this news-letter. Once again participants from any nationare welcome to present their work at theworkshop.Finally, we would like to thank theResearch Program on Knowledge Organisationand Information Interaction & Behaviour at theRoyal School for providing facilities and supportto the workshop.

© Photos of the article: Balázs Schlemmer. More Workshop (and other) photos will be available here soon: http://perswww.kuleuven.be/~u0041516/nordic/

On 23 July 2007 Daniel E. Koshland Jr., formereditor-in-chief of the journal Science, passedaway. As many other passionate scientists he hadbeen scientifically active until his death. Indeed,volume 317 of Science published a posthumousessay in which Koshland formulated the cha-cha-cha theory of scientific discovery (Koshland,2007). In this article he proposes to subdividescientific discoveries into three categories:charge, challenge and chance, hence the namethe cha-cha-cha theory.

A discovery belongs to the Charge categoryif the problem is obvious (for example: curecancer), but the way to solve it is not clear at all.

The discoverer is he or she who sees whateveryone else has seen and thinks what no oneelse has thought before. A typical example,provided by Koshland, is Newtons discovery andexplanation of gravity.

A discovery falls into the Challenge category ifit is the response to an accumulation of facts orconcepts that were unexplained. Often these factswere brought to the open by individuals referredto as uncoverers by Koshland. An example isEinsteins theory of special relativity. Solutions toimportant challenges may lead to paradigm shifts.

Finally, a discovery may fall into the Chancecategory. Such discoveries are, however, not

CHA-CHA-CHA IN INFORMETRICS

Ronald RousseauCatholic School for Higher Education, Bruges-Ostend,Department of Industrial Sciences and Technology Ostend, BelgiumE-mail: [email protected]

http://perswww.kuleuven.be/~u0041516/nordic

http://www.db.dk/nbw2007



44

pure luck but favour the prepared mind. A well-known discovery belonging to this category isFlemings discovery of penicillin.

Koshland stresses the fact that often thediscoverer needs not one but a number oforiginal discoveries until the discovery iscomplete. He further writes that the cha-cha-chatheory is not only applicable to big discoveriesbut also to small everyday findings. Thisencourages us to see if we can apply the cha-cha-cha theory to some findings in informetrics(including scientometrics). We consider theapplication of an existing theory, concept or toolto a new situation as a charge discovery, as itmeans taking a (small) step that no one else hastaken before. Our field is an applied field, hencefor this reason most of our fields discoveries willfall into the Charge group. If someone justcollects data and tries to find out which statisticaldistribution fits best, I consider this a Chancediscovery, in particular if the resulting distributionturns out to be interesting and is confirmed later.

Some examples of discoveries in the in-formation sciences and their cha-cha-chacategory.

Problem: information retrieval across scientificdisciplines

Discovery: Science Citation IndexDiscoverer: Eugene GarfieldCategory: charge (as the idea of a citation index

existed already)

Problem: evaluation of the scientific standingof countries, universities andresearch groups

Discovery: SCI and JCRDiscoverers: Eugene Garfield (chance; as he had a

retrieval tool in mind)CWTS (Leiden: van Raan and Moed);Braun and his team at theHungarian Academy of Sciences,Martin & Irvine (SPRU, University ofSussex)

Category: charge

Problem: evaluation of journals without theuse of (subjective) peer review

Discovery: the journal impact factor

Discoverers: Garfield and Sher (2001), but based onideas by others; see (Archambault etal., 2007)

Category: charge

Problem: finding a simple way for theevaluation of an individual scientist

Discovery: the h-indexDiscoverer: Jorge HirschCategory: charge

Problem: incorporating teaching and activitiesfor the broad public in the evaluationof scientists (besides research)

Discovery: apply DEA (data envelopment analysis)Discoverer: Zeger Degraeve and his team

(Degraeve et al., 1996)Category: charge

Problem: finding a regularity in the scatteringof scientific knowledge about a topic

Discovery: Bradfords law of scatteringDiscoverer: BradfordCategory: chance (because he was actually

searching for a way to compile acomplete bibliography)

Problem: proving the mathematicalequivalence of the bibliometric laws

Discovery: a mathematical proofDiscoverer: Egghe (based on partial work and

suggestions of others, such asFairthorne, Yablonski and Bookstein)

Category: challenge

Problem: explanation of Lotka s lawDiscovery: success-breeds-successDiscoverer: Derek J. de Solla Price (based on

Simons work)Category: charge (as it was an application of

Simons work)

Problem: inadequacy of the SCI for local (non-Western) purposes

Discovery: Chinese citation indexesDiscoverer: Team of the Documentation and

Information Center of the ChineseAcademy of Sciences (DICCAS)

Category: charge


45

Problem: a representation of relations betweenscientific authors

Discovery: author co-citation analysisDiscoverers: Griffith and WhiteCategory: charge

Problem: mapping journal-journal citationrelations

Discovery: a method to perform this mapping,using data from the JCR

Discoverer: Leydesdorff (1986)Category: charge

Problem: finding a classification of sciencedesigned for evaluation purposes

Discovery: A classification, presented on pp. 359-360 of (Glänzel & Schubert, 2003)

Discoverers: Glänzel and SchubertCategory: charge

Encouraged by Koshlands words that his classificationcan also be applied to small everyday discoveries, Iadd one of my own.

Problem: structure of inlinks on the WebDiscovery: it follows a power law (= Lotkas law)Discoverer: Rousseau (small sample); Michalis,

Petros and Christos Faloutsos brothers(large scale)

Category: chance (Rousseau);charge (or chance?) (Faloutsos)

Many more examples can be given (bibliogra-phic coupling, co-citation analysis, web impactfactor, different visualization techniques). Clearly,any article contains a small discovery and, hence,can be described in this way. This leads to theproblem of making a distinction betweenDiscoveries (with capital D), discoveries, andsmall everyday discoveries. The examples pro-vided in my contribution certainly contain in-stances of each level. Moreover, some of thesediscoveries can perhaps better be described asdevelopments (maybe a fourth category?), suchas the Science Citation Index. We hope that thereader will be encouraged to apply, expand,correct or refine these examples and the cha-cha-cha theory in general. In view of the exam-ples I provided, it seems that a refinement of theCharge category could be a first step.

Acknowledgement.I thank Raf Guns (UA, IBW) and Leo Egghe (HasseltUniversity) for helpful comments on an earlier draft.

References

E. Archambault and V. Larivière (2007). Origins ofmeasures of journal impact: historicalcontingencies and their consequences oncurrent use. In: (Torres-Salinas & Moed, eds.)Proceedings of ISSI 2007. Madrid: CINDOC-CSIC, pp. 45-51.

Z. Degraeve, M. Lambrechts and V. Van Puyenbroeck(1996). Een vergelijkende prestatiestudie vande departementen van de KatholiekeUniversiteit Leuven. (A comparativeperformance study of the departments of theCatholic University of Leuven) Tijdschrift voorEconomie en Management, 41, 165-193.

M. Faloutsos, P. Faloutsos, and C. Faloutsos (1999).On power-law relationships of the Internettopology. In: Applications, Technologies,Architectures, and Protocols for ComputerCommunication. Proceedings of the conferenceon Applications, technologies, architectures,and protocols for computer communication.ACM, pp. 251 - 262.

E. Garfield (2001), Recollections of Irving H. Sher 1924-1996: polymath/ information scientistextraordinaire. Journal of the American Societyof Information Science and Technology, 52,1197-1202.

W. Glänzel and A. Schubert (2003). A new classificationscheme of science fields and subfieldsdesigned for scientometric evaluationpurposes. Scientometrics, 56, 357-367.

D.E. Koshland, Jr. (2007). The cha-cha-cha theory ofscientific discovery. Science, 317, 761-762.

L. Leydesdorff (1986). The development of frames ofreferences. Scientometrics, 9, 103-125.

R. Rousseau (1997). Sitations: an exploratory study.Cybermetrics, vol.1, issue 1.http://www.cindoc.csic.es/cybermetrics/articles/v1i1p1.html

http://www.cindoc.csic.es/cybermetrics/articles/v1i1p1.html


46

LACK OF CONSEQUENCE IN ENGLISHTRANSLATIONS OF UNIVERSITIES' NAMES RUINS

THEIR SCIENTIFIC REPUTATION

Marek KosmulskiLublin University of Technology,Nadbystrzycka 38 A, 20618 Lublin, PolandE-mail: [email protected]

AbstractThe scientific papers from Warsaw University of Technology appear in the Thomson Institute

database under over 20 different English names. "Warsaw University of Technology", which is themost commonly used English name, covers only a half of the total scientific output of the university.Thus the position of Warsaw University of Technology in scientific rankings is lower than that of an

university with similar scientific output, but which has consequently used one English name. Similarproblems are faced by other scientific institutions in non-English-speaking countries.

1. IntroductionUniversities from English-speaking countries arethe leaders in scientific rankings. Their names donot have to be translated into English, and al-ways the same name of certain university is usedin the scientific databases. Universities from En-glish-speaking countries took the top 18 ranksand the top 13 ranks in the the Shanghai Ranking(2006) and in The Times Higher EducationSupplement Ranking (2006), respectively.

The scientific databases which are used toprepare the scientific rankings are language-biased, that is, non-English-language journalsare severely underrepresented. This problem iswell-recognized in the literature (e.g., Togia &Tsigilis, 2006; Aleixandre-Benavent et al., 2007).Obviously, overrepresentation of English-lan-guage journals and underrepresentation of non-English-language journals favor the scientists andscientific institutions from English-speakingcountries in the scientific rankings. This is an in-trinsic property of scientific databases, and indivi-duals or institutions in non-English-language

countries cannot do anything about that. On theother hand the scientific institutions in non-En-glish-language countries might have improvedtheir positions in the rankings by having used al-ways the same English translations of their names.

One of the reasons of weak position of scientificinstitutions in non-English-language countries inthe scientific rankings is that the scientific outputof given institution is split between many Englishnames which may appear to be separate institu-tions. Additionally the institutions’ names in theiroriginal languages are used sometimes. Withsufficient knowledge about different names usedby certain institution, the scientific papers pro-duced by that institution could be merged intoone file, but the authors of the rankings do notpossess such knowledge. Then, only the paperswith the most popular institution’s English namecontribute to the institution’s reputation and therest of its scientific output is lost.

The institutions’ names which appear inscientific databases do not necessarily coincidewith those originally used in the publications.



47

For example between 2004 and 2007 thepresent author published 18 papers with anaffiliation “Lublin University of Technology”. InThomson Scientific database, only 6 of thesepapers were assigned to “Lublin Univ Technol”,and 12 other papers were assigned to “TechUniv Lublin”. Then the authors from non-English-language countries and their universities havea limited control upon the affiliations, whichappear in the databases. However, multipleEnglish translations are chiefly due to theuniversities’ policy.2. Case studyTable 1 illustrates the history of preferences ofthe authorities of Warsaw University of Tech-nology (Polish name Politechnika Warszawska)as to the English translation of the university’sname. More than 20 different names used inThomson database substantially contribute tothe scientific output of Warsaw University ofTechnology. Seven most popular names areanalyzed in Table 1. The other common nameswere (number of papers in Thomson Scientific

in brackets): Polytech Univ Warszawa (100),Tech Univ Warszawa (67), Politech Warszawska(85), Politech Warszawskiej (48), PolitechWarsaw (37). The last 3 names are different ab-breviations of Polish name. The most frequentlyused English translation in certain year is indi-cated by boldface in Table 1.

“Tech Univ Warsaw” was the English namepreferred over the period 1972-1976, althoughfour other names indicated in Table 1 have sub-stantial contributions. Apparently the Universityauthorities did not pay much attention to theEnglish name used in the papers published atthat time. The English name “Polytech Inst War-saw”, which prevailed in 1977 and in 1978seems to be a result of the first University’s effortto enforce use a common name, and indeed 70% of papers published at that time had the re-commended affiliation. In 1979 “Tech UnivWarsaw” became the official English translation,and 70 % of papers published over the period1979-1983 had the recommended affiliation.The period 1984-1988 witnessed a completeanarchy – the preferences changed from oneyear to another and the difference in the numberof papers between the most frequently usedand the second-most frequently used affiliationwas by less than 20 %. In 1989 “Warsaw Poly-tech Inst” was introduced as a new official name.80 % of papers published over the period 1990-1992 had the new affiliation. The present Englishname was introduced in 1993. Nowadays, 95% of scientific papers from Warsaw University ofTechnology have the officially preferred affilia-tion. Provided the University’s authorities do notchange the official name in the future, thepresent affiliation has a chance to stay high inthe scientific rankings. Nevertheless, WarsawUniversity of Technology would have doubledits publication record by having used the sameEnglish name all the time.3. DiscussionUse of multiple English names by one universityis typical in non-English-speaking countries. Anew official English name might have appearedto be more attractive than the old one at a timewhen the name was changed. Perhaps theawareness that a policy of renaming theuniversity again and again ruins its scientificreputation is not common. For example “Med

Table 1. The number of papers indexed by Thomson Scientific (accessedJuly 1 2007) by affiliation and by publication year: 1 Warsaw Univ Technol,2 Tech Univ Warsaw, 3 Warsaw Polytech Inst, 4 Warsaw Tech Univ, 5Warsaw Univ Sci & Technol, 6 Polytech Inst Warsaw, 7 Polytech UnivWarsaw, 8 logical sum 1-7.


48

Univ Warsaw” is the present official Englishname of an university, which previously used aname “Med Acad Warsaw”, but in contrast withWarsaw University of Technology, the newname has been used in scientific publications forshorter time (since 2000) and less consequently.This is why the total output under the old name“Med Acad Warsaw” still prevails. The medicaland technical universities in smaller cities ofPoland underwent analogous changes in theirofficial English names as their counterparts inWarsaw, with a similar effect. This is why theirscientific outputs under their present officialEnglish names are only small fractions of theiractual outputs.

Fortunately for them the universities in English-speaking countries do not face such a problem.4. ConclusionThe scientific output of a typical scientific institu-tion in non-English speaking country under itspresent official English name is only a small frac-tion of its actual output. In scientific rankings

based on mechanical comparison of scientific out-put (under certain institution’s name), the insti-tutions which consequently use the same Eng-lish name are favored over those, whose officialEnglish name was changed again and again.

5. References

Academic Ranking of World Universities (2006). Instituteof Higher Education, Shanghai Jiao TongUniversity, http://ed.sjtu.edu.cn/ranking2006.htm

Aleixandre-Benavent, R., Zurian, J.C.V., Miguel-Dasit, A., Arroyo, A.A. & Gomez, M.C. (2007).Hypothetical influence of non-indexed Spanishmedical journals on the impact factor of theJournal Citation Reports-indexed journals,Scientometrics, 70 (1), 53-66.

Togia, A. & Tsigilis, N. (2006). Impact factor andeducational journals: a critical examination andanalysis, Int. J.Educ. Res., 45(6), 362-379.

World University Rankings (2006). The Times HigherEducation Supplement, http://www.thes.co.uk/

CARTOON

© Nick Kim (Nearing Zero). Reproduced with the permission of the author.

http://ed.sjtu.edu.cn/ranking2006.htm

http://www.thes.co.uk

editorial boardissi-society.org/media/1188/newsletter11.pdfeditorial the role of our society in the...

Documents