scientific visibility and IF - Bruno Granier - June 21 - ICSTI 2007 Nancy

Bruno Granier - University of Western Brittany
"Impact of research assessment on scientific publication in earth sciences"

- Misuse of IF [impact factor]
citation: "The number that's devouring science"

- The Goal

* the only common goal is how visible you are...
because visibility is the qualitative factor used to assess your work

he started an OA journal - Notebooks in Geology

As an author
- (particularly in industry) you may want paper published ASAP
  - you may reiterate your message in other publications
- in academe you want impact factor

ways to increase visibiity
- slicing
- bogus signatures / invitation
- author names appear in alternate positions in similar papers
- selective or inexact quotations
- self-citation
- cutting and pasting
- lift information

Evaluators should use weighted averages for multi-author papers, 1st authorship worth much more

Question: How to detect frauds?

Answer: You need a good reviewer

As a reviewer

- the reviewer remains the sine qua non of the evaluation process

As an editor

- blacklist repeat offender authors
- use computer programs to detect plagiarism

- often citations are incorrect or not relevant

As a publisher

- OA gives happy google effect

- monitoring
  shall i use new tools/facilities (couunters) to discriminate the kind of papers that
  get the larger readership

Impact Factor

- a huge part of the scientific inofmration is not given any consideration,
since IF covers only well-established journals

The use and misuse of metrics is responsible for the death of many lab, museum etc. publications in
France and elsewhere.

Conclusion

- bibliometrics or not, the only goal remains to increase your visibility

- the Google effect is at our doors