I don't think the matter is so straightforward as you make
it out
to be, David. After all, this was an effort to rank journals
in
the field of political science, and there have been several
such
efforts in the past. Yes, I agree that it would make more
sense
to do rankings within subfields--at least the major
subfields,
which in political science are American politics,
comparative
politics, international relations, and political theory. But
where does one stop? There are many different sub-subfields
within, say, comparative politics. Should one do rankings
only
with sub-subfields? And what about a field like philosophy,
where
there has traditionally been a split between Anglo-American
analytic and Continental philosophy, with journals
reflecting one
or the other orientation but rarely both together. Those are
not
even subfields but rather methodological orientations, but
they
do structure that discipline in meaningful ways. Further,
there
are areas like political philosophy that cross disciplines
like
philosophy and political science. Should one attempt
rankings in
such an area separate from rankings in the respective
disciplines? In short, there is no end of such ways of
cutting
the knowledge pie, and my own opinion is that no one method
of
ranking is really going to provide an adequate assessment of
the
merits of any given journal.
As for "rejected work," where does one draw the
line? I note that
you don't mention "intelligent design," David. If
there is a huge
amount of writing about this subject, citation counts will
soar,
but one surely wouldn't base a decision about whether a
journal
is worth including in a science collection because it favors
that
approach and draws attacks from many quarters. Maybe include
it
in the sociology of science? One might also argue the point
that
disputes over the bell curve and cold fusion really
"drive
further inquiry." Perhaps they may better be viewed as
distractions from real science, impeding its progress.
Sandy Thatcher
Penn State University
>No librarian or publisher-- nobody but an uninformed
academic
>bureaucrat-- would ever attempt to compare the quality
of
>journals between different fields, or the work of
faculty between
>different fields, using publication counts or citation
metrics,
>regardless of attempts at normalization.
>
>There may be rational objective methods for the
distribution of
>resources within individual academic subjects, but the
>distribution of library or research or education
resources among
>the different subjects is a political question. It is
for example
>reasonable to attempt a rational discussion of which
>developmental molecular biologists do the best research,
or the
>relative importance of the different publication media
in
>developmental molecular biology, but to decide the
relative
>importance of researchers in that subject with respect
to the
>other fields of biology--let alone to mathematics--or
even more
>absurdly, comparative literature-- is not a question
for
>calculation.
>
>But Sandy falls into the fallacy of attributing
unimportance to
>rejected work. The disputes over the Bell Curve, or cold
fusion,
>are what drive further inquiry. We progress in all
fields of
>science by scientifically disproving error.
>
>David Goodman, Ph.D., M.L.S.
>previously:
>Bibliographer and Research Librarian
>Princeton University Library
>
>dgoodman princeton.edu
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