5 ms·

Yet it still participates and encourages the bibliometrics game, which benefits the big publishers. A simple way to make a step away from encouraging bibliomet

by p4bl0 2y ago

Yet it still participates and encourages the bibliometrics game, which benefits the big publishers. A simple way to make a step away from encouraging bibliometrics (which would be a step in the right direction) would be to list publications by date (most recent first) on authors pages rather than by citations count, or at least to let either users and/or authors choose the default sorting they want to use (when visiting a page for users, for their page by default for authors).

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
Scriddie 2y ago
this^10
SideQuark 2y ago
> the bibliometrics game Bibliometrics, in use for over 150 years now, is not a game. That's like arguing there is no value in the PageRank algorithm, and no validity to trying to find out which journals or researchers or research teams publish better content using evidence to do so. > which benefits the big publishers Ignoring that it helps small researchers seems short sighted. > A simple way to make a step ... would be to list publications by date It's really that hard to click "year" and have that sorted? It's almost a certainty when someone is looking for a scholar, they are looking for more highly cited work than not, so the default is probably the best use of reader times. I absolutely know when I look up an author, I am interested in what other work they did that is highly regarded more than any other factor. Once in a while I look to see what they did recently, which is exactly one click away.
- mindcrime 2y ago
  To be fair, you did hedge and say "almost a certainty" and maybe that's true. But speaking for myself, I generally couldn't care less about citation count. If anything, my interest in a document may be inversely proportional to the citation count. And that's because I'm often looking for either a. "lost gems" - things are are actually great/useful research, but that got overlooked for whatever reason, or b. historical references to obscure topics that I'm deep-diving into. BUT... I'm not in formal academia, I care very little about publishing research myself (at least not from a bibliometric perspective. For me "publishing" might be writing a blog post or maybe submitting a pre-print somewhere) so I'm just not part of that whole (racket|game|whatever-you-want-to-call-it).
  - SideQuark 2y ago
    Since it trivially does what you want with one click, and you’re not the audience, why the bizarre hatred of something you don’t understand? It works great for its audience, likely better than any other product. Do you think your desire for rare outweighs the masses that don’t? If you want rare, why even use a tool designed for relevant? Go dig through the stacks at your favorite old library, bookstore, cellar, wherever. I’d suspect if you were handed random low citation count articles you’d soon find they are not gems. They’re not cited for a reason. Heck, want low citation count items? Go find a list of journal rankings (well crap, more rankings…) in the field you’re interested in, take the lowest rated ones, and go mine those crap journals for gems. Voila! Problem solved. And I bet you find why they’re low ranked searching for gems in slop.
    - mindcrime 2y ago
      I have no idea where you got anything about hatred, or any idea that there's anything here I don't understand. I just wanted to make the point that there are, in fact, people out there who are not singularly focused on citation count. That said, I personally don't have any problem with Google Scholar since you can, as you say, trivially sort by date.
  - kurikuri 2y ago
    > If anything, my interest in a document may be inversely proportional to the citation count. This makes little sense to me. The citation count gives you an idea of what others are looking at and building upon. As far as I’ve seen, having a low citation count isn’t an uncommon phenomena, but having a high citation count is. In terms of information gained while triaging papers to read, a low citation count gives you almost no information.
    - mindcrime 2y ago
      Don't over-interpret what I'm saying here. I'm not on some "mission from God" to ignore all high citation count papers. My point is only that sometimes I want to pointedly look through things that aren't "what others are looking at and building on", on the basis that sometimes things get "lost" for whatever reason. Ideas show up, are maybe ahead of their time, or get published in the wrong journal, or get overshadowed by a "hot" contemporaneous item, etc., and then stay hidden due to path dependence. My goal is to make an active effort to break that path dependent flow and maybe dredge up something that is actually useful but that has remained "below the radar".
1vuio0pswjnm7 2y ago
Like the old ISI Web of Science back in the day. But Google remains focused on popularity because that is optimal for advertising, where large audiences are the only ones that matter and there is this insidious competition for top ranking (no expectation that anyone would ever want to dig deep into search results). That sort of focus is not ideal for non-commercial research, IMHO.

by p4bl0 2y ago

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

Scriddie 2y ago

this^10

SideQuark 2y ago

> the bibliometrics game Bibliometrics, in use for over 150 years now, is not a game. That's like arguing there is no value in the PageRank algorithm, and no validity to trying to find out which journals or researchers or research teams publish better content using evidence to do so. > which benefits the big publishers Ignoring that it helps small researchers seems short sighted. > A simple way to make a step ... would be to list publications by date It's really that hard to click "year" and have that sorted? It's almost a certainty when someone is looking for a scholar, they are looking for more highly cited work than not, so the default is probably the best use of reader times. I absolutely know when I look up an author, I am interested in what other work they did that is highly regarded more than any other factor. Once in a while I look to see what they did recently, which is exactly one click away.

mindcrime 2y ago
To be fair, you did hedge and say "almost a certainty" and maybe that's true. But speaking for myself, I generally couldn't care less about citation count. If anything, my interest in a document may be inversely proportional to the citation count. And that's because I'm often looking for either a. "lost gems" - things are are actually great/useful research, but that got overlooked for whatever reason, or b. historical references to obscure topics that I'm deep-diving into. BUT... I'm not in formal academia, I care very little about publishing research myself (at least not from a bibliometric perspective. For me "publishing" might be writing a blog post or maybe submitting a pre-print somewhere) so I'm just not part of that whole (racket|game|whatever-you-want-to-call-it).
- SideQuark 2y ago
  Since it trivially does what you want with one click, and you’re not the audience, why the bizarre hatred of something you don’t understand? It works great for its audience, likely better than any other product. Do you think your desire for rare outweighs the masses that don’t? If you want rare, why even use a tool designed for relevant? Go dig through the stacks at your favorite old library, bookstore, cellar, wherever. I’d suspect if you were handed random low citation count articles you’d soon find they are not gems. They’re not cited for a reason. Heck, want low citation count items? Go find a list of journal rankings (well crap, more rankings…) in the field you’re interested in, take the lowest rated ones, and go mine those crap journals for gems. Voila! Problem solved. And I bet you find why they’re low ranked searching for gems in slop.
  - mindcrime 2y ago
    I have no idea where you got anything about hatred, or any idea that there's anything here I don't understand. I just wanted to make the point that there are, in fact, people out there who are not singularly focused on citation count. That said, I personally don't have any problem with Google Scholar since you can, as you say, trivially sort by date.
- kurikuri 2y ago
  > If anything, my interest in a document may be inversely proportional to the citation count. This makes little sense to me. The citation count gives you an idea of what others are looking at and building upon. As far as I’ve seen, having a low citation count isn’t an uncommon phenomena, but having a high citation count is. In terms of information gained while triaging papers to read, a low citation count gives you almost no information.
  - mindcrime 2y ago
    Don't over-interpret what I'm saying here. I'm not on some "mission from God" to ignore all high citation count papers. My point is only that sometimes I want to pointedly look through things that aren't "what others are looking at and building on", on the basis that sometimes things get "lost" for whatever reason. Ideas show up, are maybe ahead of their time, or get published in the wrong journal, or get overshadowed by a "hot" contemporaneous item, etc., and then stay hidden due to path dependence. My goal is to make an active effort to break that path dependent flow and maybe dredge up something that is actually useful but that has remained "below the radar".

1vuio0pswjnm7 2y ago

Like the old ISI Web of Science back in the day. But Google remains focused on popularity because that is optimal for advertising, where large audiences are the only ones that matter and there is this insidious competition for top ranking (no expectation that anyone would ever want to dig deep into search results). That sort of focus is not ideal for non-commercial research, IMHO.