Fact and Fiction in Citation RankingsAuthor(s): J. W. R. WhitehandSource: Area, Vol. 24, No. 3 (Sep., 1992), pp. 317-318Published by: The Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers)Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20003152 .

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317

Comments Discussion arising from paper in Area

Fact and fiction in citation rankings J W R Whitehand, School of Geography, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham, B 15 2TT

Lowenthal (1992) will, I fear, have left readers with the impression that the citation

ranking of ' humanistic geographers ' in general, and of Tuan and Sauer in particular, has been adversely affected by the fact that I confined my attention to the Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) throughout my study period (Whitehand 1985). He

argues that if the citations contained in journals covered by the Arts and Humanities Citation Index (A &HCI) had been added for 1982 a significantly different result would have been obtained. This argument is without foundation. There is in fact an almost perfect correlation between my 1982 rank order and the rank order that obtains after the extra A 5HCI citations have been added (Spearman's Rank Order Cor relation Co-efficient = + 099). Only one of the 32 centurions (Lowenthal himself)

changes position by more than one rank when those A &5HCI journal citations that do not appear in the SSCI are added. Sauer, who is ranked equal fourteenth in my SSCI based ranking, is still in fourteenth place if those A 5&HCI journal citations not present in the SSCI are added. Tuan's absence reflects the fact that he had insufficient citations in the SSCI for 1971-75 (which was compiled before certain humanities journals were hived off to the A &iHCI) to qualify for inclusion in my study. It has nothing to do with

journals that were tapped in 1971-75 not being tapped in 1982. The minimal effect of incorporating citations from the A &5HCI, which, at the time

that I undertook my study, was only available for part of the period under investigation, is not surprising when the relatively small number of citations to human geographers in

the A &HCI is taken into account. If the 1971-75 centurions are examined for 1982, the addition of A &HCI citations to those in the SSCI increases the total number of citations received by the centurions collectively by less than 4 per cent. This takes account of the fact that two out of every three citations to the centurions in the A &HCI duplicate citations in the SSCI.

Whether the low representation of humanistic geographers among highly-cited geographers can be accounted for in part by the under-representation of arts and humanities source items in the database from which the citation indexes of the Institute for Scientific Information (IS) are compiled is a moot point. For the period that I studied it is hard to envisage a revised set of source items that would have enabled humanistic geographers to attain a substantially higher representation among highly cited human geographers than results from the use of the ISI's database. I am inclined, therefore, to seek explanations for the relatively low representation of such geographers in the characteristics of fields of knowledge and the citation practices associated with them. On statistical grounds, one would expect a paucity of highly-cited researchers to be associated with fields in which relatively small numbers of researchers are working. In this regard one should not overlook the probability that, in 1971-75, humanistic

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318 Comments

geographers were less numerous than social science geographers, and this alone may well account for their low representation among the centurions. It may also be that humanistic geographers, a far from homogeneous 'group', on average cited a more

diffuse literature and cited one another proportionately less than social science geographers did. However, these speculations remain untested.

Lowenthal has reminded us of an interesting aspect of the citation ranking of human geographers and he may well have thereby enlivened the gossip to which he refers. But he provides no evidence that justifies modifying the statements made in the papers of

mine that he cites. The low representation of humanistic geographers among highly cited human geographers, at least in the period examined in my study, seems more likely to reflect the nature, popularity and interrelationships of fields of knowledge than the unrepresentativeness of the data sources employed.

References Lowenthal D (1992)' Geography misconstrued as social science' Area 24, 158-60

Whitehand J W R (1985)' Contributors to the recent development and influence of human geography: what

citation analysis suggests ' Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 10, 222-34

Cite without situation: on the artless construction of influence in human geography

A R Bodman, Department of Geography, University of Vermont, Burlington, VT 05405, USA

Lowenthal's (1992) commentary on the use of citation analysis in geography is an artless attempt to rearrange the intellectual landscape to suit his predispositions. He creates a mirage. He blends myth and misinformation in equal measures: he attempts deconstruction by numbers. Reduced to its simplest, his argument contains two fundamentally contradictory propositions. The first is that literate geographers should have no difficulty in identifying authors whose work has been most influential in the development of the discipline. Common sense should rule. This' seeing eye 'approach would seem to render the need for mere data redundant. Nonetheless, his second and countervailing proposition is that previous studies (Whitehand 1985; Wrigley and

Matthews 1986, 1987; Bodman 1991) have generally overlooked an important source of data. Were citation counts from the Arts and Humanities Citation Index (A CiHCI) to be included, he contends, the contours of influence in geography would be mystically transformed. Humanistic geography would be restored to its rightful and central place and the work of' trendy social scientists' would be dispatched to the oblivion Lowenthal obviously believes it merits.

Lowenthal purports to show that there are significant numbers of citations to the work of geographers in journals indexed in A 5HCI and that their addition substantially changes the rank-ordering of influential authors. Neither claim can survive careful scrutiny, because the data he deploys are strewn about with such artistic abandon. Lowenthal concedes that 'using the A &HCI does pose problems': he completely fails to appreciate how severe these are. Critical is the very extensive overlap between A C?HCI and the Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI). Almost 55 per cent of the citations to the master weavers in A &5HCI between 1984 and 1988 are, in fact, duplicated in SSCI, and thus have already been counted. The figures given by

Lowenthal do not take account of this elementary fact. Over the five year span, the total number of unique, unduplicated citations in A &HCI for all 120 of the master weavers is only 668. Incorporating these new citations would augment the total given in my

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