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From: larsen@brahms (Michael Larsen)
Newsgroups: sci.math,sci.research
Subject: Re: How many people read an average research paper?
Message-ID: <236@cartan.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: Mon, 10-Nov-86 14:58:47 EST
Article-I.D.: cartan.236
Posted: Mon Nov 10 14:58:47 1986
Date-Received: Mon, 10-Nov-86 21:41:05 EST
References: <7966@watdaisy.UUCP> <2483@phri.UUCP>
Sender: daemon@cartan.Berkeley.EDU
Reply-To: larsen@brahms (Michael Larsen)
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Organization: Math Dept. UC Berkeley
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Keywords: Science Citation Index
Xref: mnetor sci.math:172 sci.research:17

In article <2483@phri.UUCP> roy@phri.UUCP (Roy Smith) writes:

>Science
>Citation Index (put out by ISI Press, I believe; the same people who bring
>you Current Contents)...
>lists each year the papers which get cited the most often.  That's
>really the only way to say "this was an important piece of work".  If more
>people have cited your paper than any other paper, it's probably the most
>important.
>-- 
>Roy Smith, {allegra,philabs}!phri!roy
>System Administrator, Public Health Research Institute
>455 First Avenue, New York, NY 10016

	This is an interesting theory.  Let's see how it stands up against a
short trip through the math citations index (CMCI).  The following observations
can be duplicated by anyone with access to the 1976-80 edition.

1.  Most people would consider Newton's _Principia_ to be a work of some
importance.  CMCI gives 2 references.

2.  O.K., that example was unfair because the paper in question is fairly old.
It is hard to choose a contemporary mathematical work whose title most
people will recognize.  Nevertheless, we can use Math Reviews as an indication
of stature.  This usually staid index fairly gushed over Deligne's 1972
paper "La Conjecture de Weil pour les surfaces K3."  I quote:

	This paper is awe-inspiring.  Its powerful technique and arithmetic
	insight should recommend it to a larger audience, although its
	sophistication will cause trouble for almost all readers.

How many references did this masterpiece garner from 1976 to 1980? Four.
And that includes one by the author himself.

3.  How about Durbin-Watson, "Testing for Serial Correlation in Least Squares
Regression?"  This paper, in which a theorem of Von Neumann is rederived, has
a reputation for being often cited.  It lives up to it in CMCI: 52 citations.

4.  A random search through the columns of CMCI turned up a 1964 paper by one
J. B. Kruskal which has 116 citations.  It is quite possible that I am 
merely exposing my ignorance, but I confess to having heard of neither
the mathematician in question nor the work.

The idea that a reference count is an accurate indication of the quality of
a scholar must have a strong appeal to the bureaucratic mind.  Unfortunately,
the real world doesn't seem to work that way.

-larsen @ berkeley.edu.brahms