Equity for Women in Science by Cassidy R. Sugimoto

Author:Cassidy R. Sugimoto
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harvard University Press

Measuring Scientific Impact

Awarded for research that had “the greatest benefit to humankind,” Nobel Prizes constitute the most extreme recognition of scientific impact.21 Between 1901—the year the Nobel Prize was first awarded—and 2021, only 714 distinct individuals have won one of the four scientific prizes.22 Only 25 of the medalists are women, representing 3.5% of all awardees.23 Given this singularity, Nobel Prizes are ill-suited for wide-scale evaluation of researchers. Therefore, we rely on more universal indicators of research impact—citations. As noted in the introduction, authorship serves as a central anchor in the reputation cycle of academic work. By extension, citations function as a form of currency exchange: authorship denotes production of a good, and a citation signals that the good was consumed. The higher the demand for the work, the higher its value and, by extension, the authors, institutions, and countries with which it is associated. This assumption, of course, requires both contextualization and interrogation.

The Science Citation Index was created in the second half of the twentieth century as a device for information retrieval, creating a web of knowledge that would allow researchers to traverse the increasingly complex and voluminous space of scientific documents. This web was formed through citation linkages: that is, the link between a citing and cited document.24 By the 1970s, and following the leadership of information scientist Francis Narin, evaluators had begun to use the number of citations of a given work as an indicator of its scientific impact.25

The shift to electronic databases in the 1990s further expanded the use of citation indexes, not only for information scientists but for the wider scientific community. Citation indexes became the dominant source of data for large-scale scientific evaluation, with citations as the main indicator of scientific impact.26 Citation indicators were refined and reified over time and became a cornerstone of research evaluation systems.27 In particular, the manifestation of citations in national evaluation schemes and promotion and tenure criteria solidified the importance of these indicators for symbolic capital and esteem.28 Given this importance, any systemic bias in this indicator is likely to have consequences for scientific trajectories.

Understanding citation motivation is key to unlocking potential biases in citation indicators. Several factors can influence why scholars cite (and why they do not).29 Two main perspectives are represented among citation theories: the normative and constructivist perspectives.30 Following a normative framework, authors give credit to other authors for their past achievements through cumulative citation practices. In this way, references provide “pellets of peer recognition” for past knowledge claims, justifying the use of citation as a form of academic currency.31 Socio-constructivists, however, argue that references are rhetorical devices that aim to persuade both referees and readers alike of the validity of the knowledge claims that are contained in a citing paper.32 Proponents of this perspective tend to argue that these decisions to cite are based on a nonscientific or nonmeritocratic rationale, thereby undermining the use of citations as impact indicators.

We argue for a third perspective that draws on both theories, what could be called the

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