

Is the web narrowing scientists’ expertise? - robg
http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11745514

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mechanical_fish
This is _crappy_ armchair sociology. The number and age of unique references
in modern journal papers is a measurable number, and I'm sure these folks have
done a great job of measuring it. But where's the evidence for the conclusion
that changes in this number represent changes in the nature of scientific
thought itself?

Have these people even _worked_ as scientists? Here are some reasons why
papers get cited:

\- Many journal articles open with one or two Ancient Authorities -- articles
from 1899, or a famous article written by the founder of your field in the
1950s. These are there as a kind of mission statement: If you cite Folkman _et
al_ from the 1970s, you're saying "This paper is about antiangiogenesis".

In a world where computers can tell you "here's a list of all the papers
published this year that cited Folkman _et al_ , 1971", putting an Ancient
Authority citation on your paper is an awesome form of SEO, much _better_ than
a keyword.

(It's not polite to point this out... but there's a good chance that most of a
paper's readers, and even some of the authors, haven't even read the Ancient
Authority paper. That's often not a problem, because the first paper in a
field is usually an even mix of (a) things everybody knows by now and (b)
things that turned out to be wrong, later.)

\- You cite work that directly anticipates yours. For this, you look for the
most recently published relevant references that you can find, partly because
it shows that you're paying attention and partly because _if the person
reviewing your paper has published on the same topic, and you don't cite their
most recent work, they will find a way to make you wish you had_.

\- You cite works as a shorthand for the ideas contained in them. This is like
me citing PG essays here on news.yc, or like the great _Star Trek:TNG_ episode
"Darmok" where the alien language is composed entirely of brief references to
(alien) classical history. When you're doing this, it is once again important
to cite the most recent works that you can -- it's like the difference between
commenting on a recent blog post and commenting on a blog post from 2001, or
the difference between referencing LOLcats (a stale cliche), referencing ALL
YOUR BASE (a _painfully_ stale cliche) and referencing, um, ST:TNG (which
makes me sound like I've been trapped in a box since 1990). And you want to
name-drop _popular_ articles, because what's the sense in trying to reference
things that nobody has read?

This factor alone probably accounts for the observed changes in citation
frequency. The Web is good at spreading new memes quickly! And that works for
science too! It used to take years for new fads to sweep the nation; now a guy
can claim he's Familiar With All Internet Traditions on Tuesday and there'll
be T-shirts on sale by Friday night.

Oh, and let me not forget:

\- People cite their own recent work to try and encourage others to read it
(and to boost their own personal impact factor). I doubt that the rise of
technology has changed _that_.

~~~
yummyfajitas
_People cite their own recent work to try and encourage others to read it (and
to boost their own personal impact factor). I doubt that the rise of
technology has changed that._

I don't think self-citations don't boost your impact factor.

There is another non-selfish reason self-citations are very common; many ideas
are developed in a series of papers, so the work which directly anticipates
your work is your previous work. Also, a large project often has interesting
subprojects which are worth wirting about separately (think: web framework
spins off templating library).

~~~
mechanical_fish
I agree, there are many legitimate reasons for citing your own work. But that
doesn't mean it's wrong to tease people about it. ;)

------
streety
The original publication:
<http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/321/5887/395>

