CITATION ANALYSIS FOR MEASURING THE VALUE OF SCIENTIFIC PUBLICATIONS - QUALITY ASSESSMENT-TOOL OR COMEDY OF ERRORS

The basic concepts of citation analysis and journal impact factors are discussed in the light of quality assessment of scientific publicatio ns, individual scientists and research units. The major controversies concerning this topic are addressed: technical limitations, database s electivity, time and discipline-related biases, language and publicati on type biases, multiple authorship merits and citing motivations. Bot h positive and negative aspects are put into perspective. The authors conclude that citation analysis, even when based on journal impact fac tors, can be a worthwhile criterion for evaluating publication records of individual scientists or research units, as long as some of the pr oblems discussed are sufficiently taken into account. However, this co nclusion in no way implies that citation analysis may be considered as the one and only evaluation criterion.