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Hundreds of extreme self-citing scientists revealed in new database

nature.com

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Re: Hundreds of extreme self-citing scientists revealed in new database

#91

Post by brownbat »

asimjalis wrote: post #72
hannob wrote: post #21

The core problem here is that universities think that citation statistics are a useful metric to evaluate the quality of the work of a scientist. There's plenty of evidence that this is not the case or that even the reverse may be the case [1], but this idea refuses to die. [1]

PageRank might be better way to evaluate quality. It too can be gamed. Maybe not as easily, though.

This is such a pointed reference that I can't tell if you're just being ironic.

In a very loose sense, PR is the same algorithm universities use, evaluate quality of some content based on the number of references to that content.

It is definitely gamed in similar ways. I'm surprised we haven't seen professors hire SEO firms to help increase citation counts of their research.

Re: Hundreds of extreme self-citing scientists revealed in new database

#92

Post by coldtea »

asimjalis wrote: post #72
hannob wrote: post #21

The core problem here is that universities think that citation statistics are a useful metric to evaluate the quality of the work of a scientist. There's plenty of evidence that this is not the case or that even the reverse may be the case [1], but this idea refuses to die. [1]

PageRank might be better way to evaluate quality. It too can be gamed. Maybe not as easily, though.

Err, isn't PageRank almost the same as "citations"?

Re: Hundreds of extreme self-citing scientists revealed in new database

#93

Post by holy_city »

Interestingly enough, the published work [1] has two self-citations. So maybe there's something to that phrase, “the next work cannot be carried on without referring to previous work.”

[1] https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/jou...

Re: Hundreds of extreme self-citing scientists revealed in new database

#95

Post by jbsimpson »

gdhbcc wrote: post #71
PeterisP wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sucks as a metric but it does have some rough correlation in most cases, and I'm not aware of any better easily measurable metric - if you have one in mind, it'd be great to hear. The alternative of having a bureaucrat "simply judge quality" IMHO is even worse, even less objective, and even more prone to being gamed. The main problem is that there is an objective need (or desire?) by various stakeholders to have s…

Why not simply use replication as a measure? Have your studies been replicated? How many other studies have you replicated? Would both help solve the replication crisis, and resolve this problem. Of course then you might have 10 000 studies replicating the same easy to do study... which is why the "score" should be reduced based on how many other times that study has been replicated.

The issue is how many researchers want to spend their time replicating the research of other people rather than doing their own original work. Getting funding is already incredibly hard, plus no-one is going to give you tenure or promote you for replicating the work of others.

Re: Hundreds of extreme self-citing scientists revealed in new database

#96

Post by petschge »

coldtea wrote: post #92
asimjalis wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PageRank might be better way to evaluate quality. It too can be gamed. Maybe not as easily, though.

Err, isn't PageRank almost the same as "citations"?

No, because it counts citations from influential papers with a higher weight.

Re: Hundreds of extreme self-citing scientists revealed in new database

#97

Post by ChuckMcM »

mehrdadn wrote: post #81
ChuckMcM wrote: post #77

Perhaps it would be useful for reviewers to point out which citations do not contribute to the paper? It really is a tough problem. If someone is toiling along in some niche they have carved out, they and their colleagues may be the only one working in that space. That leads to a lot of cross citation and self citation. That said, if you publish paper A, and then cite it in paper B which builds on that work, then in…

> if you publish paper A, and then cite it in paper B which builds on that work, then in paper C you really only need to cite paper B if you're building on the work, not B and A. Logically I agree with you, but a lot of academics seem to believe differently when it comes to citing other people's work, and if we are to go by that logic (which a lot of people are inevitably forced to do), I don't see why one should tre…

That's a fair point. Having reviewing policies that would call that out however could hopefully push back on the behavior.

Re: Hundreds of extreme self-citing scientists revealed in new database

#98

Post by whatshisface »

PeterisP wrote: post #57
hannob wrote: post #21

The core problem here is that universities think that citation statistics are a useful metric to evaluate the quality of the work of a scientist. There's plenty of evidence that this is not the case or that even the reverse may be the case [1], but this idea refuses to die. [1]

It sucks as a metric but it does have some rough correlation in most cases, and I'm not aware of any better easily measurable metric - if you have one in mind, it'd be great to hear. The alternative of having a bureaucrat "simply judge quality" IMHO is even worse, even less objective, and even more prone to being gamed. The main problem is that there is an objective need (or desire?) by various stakeholders to have s…

>The alternative of having a bureaucrat "simply judge quality"

The bureaucrat in this case would be another university professor working in the same field.

Re: Hundreds of extreme self-citing scientists revealed in new database

#99

Post by lolc »

techie128 wrote: post #15

Not defending people who self-cite but here is an alternative explanation. There are many areas of science that have very few researchers working on the same or related problems. In addition papers tend to build on prior works of the same or related researchers. Over time we may see clusters of what look like "self-cited" papers. This is not abnormal.

Self-citation or clique-citation is only problematic if it doesn't fulfil its main purpose of providing relevant references. This should not be a surprising statement. But we just read an article where that property of citations is a sideshow. We got to the point where citation scores are bandied about without even asking the main question: "Well are the papers any good?" And now I worry that papers could get worse simply because of a citation-inflation.

I'm currently reading "The Systems Model of Creativity; The Collected Works of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi" and was really surprised at the rate of self-citation in the included papers. Now it does seem to me that the cited studies are relevant. And I can't judge whether there would have been papers from other authors even better suited for citing.

And why am I even reading that book? Well because of the persistence with which Csikszentmihalyi gets cited in other writings I read. How do I know these writers weren't shills for Csikszentmihalyi? I don't care all that much when the material is good.

So in the end should I care about backwater publications that cite themselves excessively? Because I don't have to read them. As a consumer I don't seem to get hurt by the practice.

Re: Hundreds of extreme self-citing scientists revealed in new database

#100

Post by Jhsto »

cbanek wrote: post #56

As someone who now works in astronomy, I'm not at all surprised at the high self-citation rate for the field. It is true that a lot of papers are published by large consortiums. For example, at LSST (where I work), if you have been working on the project for 2 years, you are considered a "builder" and added as an author to all major project wide papers. Those papers, which tend to be long and full of great stuff, are…

> I wonder how many of these papers are where the first author has cited other papers where they are the first author.

Also, it's worth mentioning that countries which support PhD via publication essentially require you to conduct self-citing research. This is to show you've had a common thread between your research, and that the PhD can be defended as to have all the papers be considered to be on the same subject.

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