What's in a Citation?Author(s): J. W. R. WhitehandSource: Area, Vol. 19, No. 2 (Jun., 1987), pp. 170-171Published by: The Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers)Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20002442 .

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170 Comments

Again, the data base represents the concerns of its subscribers in American academia. In the USA, as Wrigley and Matthews note, geography is a very small, and badly under-rated discipline. So, while Current Contents has listed every bulletin of the Arkansas Agriculture Experiment Station for years, it added Geografiska Annaler and the Zeitschrift for Geomorphologie only in the last year or so at my request! No wonder, geography citation scores are low. Much of the normal citation network is excluded!

The coverage of Geographical serials by the ISI data-base remains patchy and unrepresentative. However, this is not the Institute's fault. It is always willing to evaluate new titles for inclusion in the index and is open to suggestions from readers of Current Contents. So, the way ahead is clear. If there is a periodical, which you find useful, but which is presently ignored by Current Contents and the ISI citation index, write and tell them.

Reference Wrigley N and Matthews S (1986)' Citation classics and citation levels in geography 'Area 18, 185-94

What's in a citation?

J W R Whitehand, Department of Geography, University of Birmingham, Birmingham B1 5 2TT

Area 18.3, containing Wrigley and Matthews' enthusiastic article on citation classics and Smith's critical assessment of the UGC research ratings, arrived on my desk at the same time as the 'Domesday' issue of Transactions and Performance indicators in universities (Joint CVCP/UGC Working Group 1986). By the time I had reached the last of these publications, and learned that citations were being proposed as ' performance indicators 'in universities, it was hard to avoid some connection with the

others. Smith (1986, 248) is rightly concerned about the use of the monetary value of

research grants to measure research performance. The use of an input to measure output is flawed logically, even if some correlation between income and research performance could be demonstrated empirically. Since citations refer to output they have a head start over research grants as indicators of research performance. However, they are indicators of the utilisation of research, which is not the same as a measure of quality. Furthermore, unlike money, they are far from being standardised measures. For example, they may indicate a fundamental dependence on the cited work or be merely perfunctory, they may be favourable or critical, and the number of cases in which they are misleading or just plain wrong is by no means negligible. If to this is added the extreme care necessary in compiling citation data, then there are sufficient problems, I suspect, to make Smith more than a little apprehensive at the thought of such a tool in the hands of the UGC.

As a convert to citation analysis many years ago and as a student of citation practices, especially during my Editorship of Area, I am ambivalent about the use of citations in this context. I share Wrigley's enthusiasm for citation analysis, yet I wince when I check some of his own citations, which reinforce my view that citation counts, on their own, leave unanswered so many interesting questions about underlying relationships. They are undoubtedly sometimes deceptive. Two illustrations may suffice.

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Comments 171

First, Wrigley (1985, 147) cited my Area article about the ISI's data on geography journals (Whitehand 1984) as an example of a ' unidimensional ' view. Yet it was made quite plain in that article, at least by example and inference, that I did not take such a view. Indeed, I commented on the usefulness of total citations as a measure of a

iournal's importance, made a favourable, though highly qualified, assessment of the ' journal impact factor ', and, in drawing attention to the aspects of the ISI's data that I

did not deal with in the article, I referred readers to Wrigley's own wider-ranging discussion! Secondly, Wrigley and Matthews (1986, 194) in their article on citation classics referred to a' weakness 'in my work (Whitehand 1985) relating to the fact that I studied a ' closed set' of authors. In fact the purpose of the particular piece of analysis referred to by Wrigley and Matthews was to study how the citations of those authors that were the highest cited in 1971-75 varied before and after that period (Whitehand 1985, 228). Far from being a weakness, it was a necessary part of that particular test that the same authors were compared at different times. What Wrigley and Matthews describe as my 'league table of " centurions " for 1982 ' did not purport to show the highest-cited authors in 1982; it showed the ranking in 1982 of those authors that had been highest-cited authors in 1971-75. However, the method used to discover the highest-cited authors in 1971-75 could be used to discover the highest-cited authors in 1982 or, if desired, in any other period covered by the ISI.

The fact that Wrigley's misrepresentations and my response to them may be doing wonders for the 'performance indicators ' of both of us in the next round of UGC assessments will, I trust, give pause for thought. Furthermore, these examples from

Wrigley's work in no way do justice to my forthcoming Anthology of miscitations. Yet not even that weighty tome undermines the utility of citation counts as a crude indi cator of the usage of research. The important point is that while we are counting we do not become mesmerised into thinking that all citations are equal. I therefore support the suggestion by Wrigley and Matthews that a regular citation classics feature be instituted in Area. Would the Editor, however, consider supplementing it with a

miscitation classics feature? Readers will have their own views on how those who figure prominently in such a feature might be rewarded in the next UGC research ratings.

References Joint CVCP/UGC Working Group (1986) Performance indicators in universities (Committee of Vice

Chancellors and Principals of the Universities of the United Kingdom

Smith D M (1986) ' UGC research ratings: pass or fail? ' Area 18, 247-50

Whitehand J W R (1984) 'The impact of geographical journals: a look at the ISI data ' Area 16, 185-7

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

citation analysis suggests ' Transactions, Institute of British Geographers 11, 222-34

Wrigley N (1985) 'Guest editorial: citation classics in urban and regional research' Environment and Planning A 17, 147-9

Wrigley N and Matthews S (1986) 'Citation classics and citation levels in geography' Area 18, 185-94

Neil Wrigley and Stephen Matthews will respond to these comments in Area 19.3.

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