Is it possible to divide scientific papers into categories depending on the citation index? Example:
N = 0 - the paper is useless
N = 1 - the paper is useful
N = 10 - the paper is successful
N = 50 - the paper becomes a classic of the scientific or educational field.
However, this characterizes the authors, in my opinion, only indirectly. Why? Because if there are, say, ten co-authors, then success must be divided into ten. And only if the author is one, then the whole contribution belongs only to him!
For me, the individual quality of a paper is much more important than a formal statistical index. Often there are other reasons for large numbers of citations than quality, although statistically quality and citations are correlated. It seems to me that this hunt for high citation rates is doing damage to science. The founders of scientometrics, among them Eugene Garfield, did a great job in statistical analysis of science. Unfortunately, their methods are now misused to evaluate individuals. Garfield wrote: “In an ideal world, evaluators would read each article and make personal judgments”. (See this dicussion: https://www.researchgate.net/post/Your_opinion_about_the_following_link)
Does it not depend on factors like the time read or the journal? (Sorry for my ignorance)
The citation index is useful and in some way explain the quality of determinate article, but it is not all the necessary to tell about the importance of a scientific article. Some time a review article has a lot of cites...and the authors only gathered the precedent results of diferents scientifics of diferents countries.
in my opinion nothing new is discovered is this kind of papers. By other hand others paper resolved a scientific problem that concern to an special field of researchers, it could be very import, but the citation index would be low because the limited number of persons that read it.
Luis
Dear Mª Angeles Zorrilla Lopez-Perea
You can usually make a wider observation based on the quartile of the journal (or even outside of Scopus or Web of Science). The number of reads, in my opinion, is also an indicator of usefulness, but less valuable, because the paper is also read by non-scientists. Finally, usually more or less respectable papers are cited and are considered to be a state of the art or the like.
Yes, Dear luis alberto mendez-rosado
You are quite right!
However, even in a limited circle, an important article is likely to be cited (it will be usefull (N is not equal to 0). And if a very small number of scientists are dealing with the problem, maybe this question is not very relevant (in international context)?
Valentyn
P.S. Intuitively, it is risky to assume that only about 10 percent of articles should be considered really useful papers. Even in Scopus there is an excessive amount of science-like works, in my opinion. And what can be expected when science is turned into competition and duty! I apologize if I offended anyone.
Some scientific works need to more efforts. So, they are preformed by team consist of many authors. Consequently, of course the effort will distribute for all.
Some scientific works consist of uninvolved people, just because they are Heads, citeable Professors etc. Others join together to produce large quantities of documents to increase the influence of their department.
Yes, it is true. Maybe say Scopus or WOS already does this classification somehow? I might need to go and see, but maybe it is happening. Maybe not by index or similar indices. Thank you for this
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