Re: Digitometrics
On Thu, 24 May 2001, Tim Brody wrote (about my proposed 2nd criterion for evaluation of an eprint archive, which was: 2) its suitability for yielding citation data [an 'impact-ranking' criterion?]): [tb] One might also add the facility to export hit data, as an [tb] alternative criterion (or any other raw statistical data?). What kind of raw statistical data might be most useful, in the future, for 'impact-ranking'? Perhaps the beginning of the answer lies in what can be measured, then what can be measured accurately, and lastly what is useful to users. The first part is (in no particular order): hits, citations, authors, institutions, countries, dates, and sizes, ...? At the arXiv archive, one section of the FAQ section (under Miscellaneous) addresses the question: Why don't you release statistics about paper retrieval?. (See: http://xxx.lanl.gov/help/faq/statfaq). The short answer provided is: Such 'statistics' are difficult to assess for a variety of reasons. The longer answer also includes the comments that: [*snip* accentuates faddishness] And, [*snip* big brother is watching] Thought-provoking comments? I would say there are better reasons than the two you chose, some of which mentioned by arXiv. For example, no system administrator would appreciate someone downloading a paper 1000 times just to up their hits! Also, as pointed out by arXiv, knowing how little one's research is read or cited could put a researcher off arXiving all together. (I provide an example of such statistics from cite-base, but leave it to the user to decide whether they are useful or not) All the best, Tim Brody
Big Brother and Digitometrics
On Fri, 25 May 2001, Jim Till wrote: At the arXiv archive, one section of the FAQ section (under Miscellaneous) addresses the question: Why don't you release statistics about paper retrieval?. (See: http://xxx.lanl.gov/help/faq/statfaq). The short answer provided is: Such 'statistics' are difficult to assess for a variety of reasons. So are citation statistics. So? It could be argued perhaps correctly that statistics may provide some useful information at least on the relative popularity of submissions, since the distributed access and other factors may be subsumable into some overall scale factor. But even this information is ambiguous in many cases, and publicizing, even when accurate, could merely accentuate faddishness in fields already excessively faddish. Correct. So? Most significantly, however, there is a strong philosophic reason for not publicizing (or even saving) these statistics. When one browses in a library it is very important (in fact legislated) that big brother is not watching through a camera mounted on the wall; for the benefit of readers it is very important to maintain in every way possible this sense of freedom from monitoring in the electronic realm. Hit rates do not monitor WHO is hitting X, just HOW MANY are hitting X. Stevan Harnad har...@cogsci.soton.ac.uk Professor of Cognitive Sciencehar...@princeton.edu Department of Electronics and phone: +44 23-80 592-582 Computer Science fax: +44 23-80 592-865 University of Southampton http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/ Highfield, Southamptonhttp://www.princeton.edu/~harnad/ SO17 1BJ UNITED KINGDOM
