I don't believe that citation is a reliable metric, since there are areas with more papers than others, so more quotes. Therefore, in my opinion should take into account a set of factors as impact factor in reliable bases, citations, number of readings, previous works of the authors.
Dear João Lucas I agree with you in your critique on 'citation' for as a reliable factor - even more so, when one considers, that the number of citations can be 'optimized' if a certain group of people is citing each other to push their citations circlewise.
But I don't believe that a broader set of factors can solve this problem. To me, a broader set of factors only tends to hide the fundamental problem of quantifactions like this, because certain topics (e.g. which seem current very important, or are a trend at a certain time) get more attention (and therefore more citations) as well as specific kinds of publicatins can generate more citations then other forms of publications (e.g. small articles raise the chance of getting more cited than huge monographies). All of these aspects produce the impact or impression of importance and influence the way scientific work can function, since it fosters economic strategies of doing research and publishment. Since it's writing a book takes much more time and effort than writing a paper, some researchers could tend to only publishing papers instead of following an important question in a broad and deeper sense while writing a comprehensive book. Furthermore, 'exotic' topics or research methods which aren't mainstream get disadvanteged in a structural way, too. That could lead to narrow or restricted topics and methods, since research funds could be linked to kinds of research which follows (or can follow) those economic logics.
To me, such economic mindsets seem to be a huge problem in the first place and should be rejected by any costs.
Please see the following link
https://mamidala.wordpress.com/2011/07/10/25/
Best Regards João Lucas de Souza Silva
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Academic Journals