An Open Letter to ISI Web of Knowledge, Google Scholar, and SciVerse Scopus
_A bit of context first. This letter arose as a result of discussions regarding citations practices in meta-analyses on Twitter several weeks ago. We all agreed citations of work within meta-analyses should be counted, but noted that many modern citation counting services disregard any citations not in the main body of a paper. Appendix citations are dropped, however. And due to a variety of restrictions, we often only cite the papers we use as data in appendices, and so are not counted. Our discussion resulted in the following letter that sixty-eight scientists around the globe have signed. I look forward to further fruitful discussion with the organizations above (who have been contacted) and hope that this situation is corrected.
Update 1: Within a few minutes, Chris from Web of Knowledge contacted me to make sure he had the details correct, and has forwarded this to the WoK Dev team. We’ll see if they get in contact.
Update 2: More signatures added on Nov 24, 2013. We’re now at 72.
Update 3: Despite also hearing from SCOPUS that this was being forwarded on to their product manager, no word back. Also, no word from GS, despite this being sent directly to members of their dev team by common contacts. _
Dear Staff & Support Teams,
We are writing as a community of researchers in ecology, evolution and conservation biology who rely on the citation metrics you provide. We love your service, and, frankly, depend on it for a wide variety of reasons (e.g., identifying research trends, finding relevant papers, evaluating the influence of papers/researchers). However, in one respect your counts are becoming increasingly inaccurate. We have come to realize that citations - sometimes hundreds of them - that we have made in the appendices of our own published papers are not being counted by your service. We felt obligated to bring this issue to your attention, as it affects the accuracy and reliability of your statistics.
We are a group of researchers who conduct meta-analyses: analyses of published data, typically gathered by extracting data from published scientific papers. The standard practice in our and many other fields is to include citations to works that we use for data - but in the case of meta-analyses in particular, these citations do not necessarily appear in the main reference section of our papers. As meta-analyses regularly get their data from 50+ papers, and journals often have strict space limits and limits on the number of references, the citations are often included in supplementary material, most of which are online only (SOMs). These appendices are subject to the same level of peer review as the core article.
As far as we understand, citations in SOMs are not recorded by you. Hence, the papers we cite do not receive the proper citation credit, and the citation lists you provide for our own papers are incomplete. The failure to consider references in SOMs - particularly in the case of meta-analyses - severely reduces the accuracy of the citation counts you present for each paper. It is also poses a huge ethical problem for us because it means that we do not give proper credit, in the form of a citation, to the many superb scientists whose high-quality work is the jumping-off point for our own analyses. In turn, these colleagues of ours may be less inclined to be charitable when we come asking for data contributions to future meta-analyses.
We ask that you consider including citations garnered from supplementary online materials in academic journals.
If there is any way that we can facilitate this by contacting journals and editors in our own fields, we are more than happy to help. We feel very strongly about correcting this problem, and hope it can lead to some tangible benefits for both you and countless numbers of scientists.
Thank you, and we look forward to engaging in a productive dialogue about this issue.
Signed,
Jarrett Byrnes Department of Biology University of Massachusetts Boston Boston, MA 02125
Ross Mounce Department of Biology & Biochemistry University of Bath Bath, BA2 7AY UK
Alexander Bond Department of Biology University of Saskatchewan Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, S7N 5E2 Canada
John Griffin Department of Biosciences Swansea University Swansea, Wales, SA28PP UK
Mark Anthony Browne National Center for Ecological Analysis & Synthesis University of California, Santa Barbara 735 State Street, Suite 300 Santa Barbara, CA 93101-3351
Gavin Simpson Institute of Environmental Change and Society University of Regina 3737 Wascana Parkway, Regina, SK S4S 0A2 Canada
Michael P. Taylor Department of Earth Sciences University of Bristol Bristol BS8 1RJ UK
Julia Stewart National Center for Ecological Analysis & Synthesis University of California, Santa Barbara 735 State Street, Suite 300 Santa Barbara, CA 93101-3351
Mary Hunsicker National Center for Ecological Analysis & Synthesis University of California, Santa Barbara 735 State Street, Suite 300 Santa Barbara, CA 93101-3351
Robert Lanfear Ecology, Evolution, and Genetics Australian National University 116 Daley Road, Acton Canberra, ACT 2602 Australia
Ethan White Department of Biology and The Ecology Center Utah State University 5305 Old Main Hill Logan, UT 84341 United States
Morgan Ernest Department of Biology and The Ecology Center Utah State University 5305 Old Main Hill Logan, UT 84341 United States
Noam Ross Department of Environmental Science and Policy University of California at Davis 1 Shields Avenue Davis, CA 95616 twitter: @noamross
Trevor A. Branch School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences University of Washington Seattle, WA, 98195 United States twitter: @TrevorABranch
Philip Martin Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, Wallingford, Oxfordshire. OX10 8BB. UK. twitter:@_PhilMartin
Kyle Edwards Kellogg Biological Station Michigan State University 3700 E. Gull Lake Dr. Hickory Corners, MI 49060
Jonathan S. Lefcheck Virginia Institute of Marine Science The College of William & Mary Gloucester Point, VA 23062
Terry McGlynn Department of Biology California State University Dominguez Hills 1000 E. Victoria St. Carson, CA 90747 USA
Karthik Ram Museum of Vertebrate Zoology University of California, Berkeley Berkeley, CA 94720 USA
Daniel Falster Biological Sciences, Macquarie University NSW 2109, Australia
Bradley Cardinale School of Natural Resources & Environment University of Michigan Ann Arbor, MI 48103
Ignasi Bartomeus Postdoctoral Researcher Department of Ecology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, SE-75007 Uppsala, Sweden @ibartomeus
Sean Tuck Department of Plant Sciences University of Oxford South Parks Road OX1 3RB
Helen Phillips Department of Ecology and Evolution Imperial College London Silwood Park Campus SL5 7PY
Mark Westoby Dept of Biological Sciences Macquarie University, Sydney NSW 2109 Australia
Thomas White Dept of Biological Sciences Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW 2109 Australia
Gregory Carey School of Biological and Chemical Sciences Queen Mary, University of London London E1 4NS
Adam Algar School of Geography University of Nottingham Nottingham NG7 2RE UK
J. Emmett Duffy Virginia Institute of Marine Science The College of William and Mary Gloucester Point, VA 23062-1346
Eduardo S. A. Santos Departamento de Ecologia Universidade de São Paulo Rua do Matão, 321 - Trav. 14, sala 243 Cid. Universitária - São Paulo, SP 05508-090 Brazil
Lauri Laanisto Institute of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences Estonian University of Life Sciences Kreutzwaldi 5, 51014, Tartu Estonia
Emilio M. Bruna Department of Wildlife Ecology and Conservation & Center for Latin American Studies University of Florida Gainesville, FL 32611-0430
Julian A. Velasco Laboratorio de Análisis Espaciales Instituto de Zoología Universidad Nacional Autonóma de México México, D.F. CP. 04510 Phone: (55) 5622-8222 ext: 47880
Timothée E. Poisot Theoretical Ecology Group Université du Quebec a Rimouski Quebec Centre for Biodiversity Sciences Rimouski, QC, Canada
Steven J. Cooke Biology Department Carleton University Ottawa, ON, K1S 5B6, Canada
Mick Watson Director of ARK-Genomics The University of Edinburgh Edinburgh, UK EH25 9RG
Xiao Xiao Department of Biology and The Ecology Center Utah State University 5305 Old Main Hill Logan, UT 84341 United States
Joshua King Biology Department University of Central Florida Orlando, FL 32816
Andrew D. Steen Department of Microbiology University of Tennessee Knoxville, TN 37996
Chris Harrod School of Biological Sciences Queen’s University, Belfast BT9 7BL UK
Allen Hurlbert Department of Biology University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3280
Mike S. Fowler Department of Biosciences Swansea University Swansea, SA2 8PP UK
Dieter Lukas Department of Zoology University of Cambridge Cambridge, CB23EJ UK
Kate Boersma Department of Zoology Oregon State University Corvallis, OR 97331
Ramón E. Martínez-Grimaldo Instituto de Biología Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
Fernando T. Maestre Universidad Rey Juan Carlos Departamento de Biología y Geología Escuela Superior de Ciencias Experimentales y Tecnología C/ Tulipán s/n, Móstoles, 28933 SPAIN
Andrew B. Cooper School of Resource and Environmental Management Simon Fraser University Burnaby, British Columbia, CANADA V5A 1S6
Josef C. Uyeda Institute for Bioinformatics and Evolutionary Studies University of Idaho Moscow, Idaho 83844
Elita Baldridge Department of Biology and The Ecology Center Utah State University 5305 Old Main Hill Logan, UT 84341 United States
Franciska T. de Vries Faculty of Life Sciences Michael Smith Building The University of Manchester Oxford Road Manchester M13 9PT United Kingdom
Aidan M. Keith Centre for Ecology & Hydrology Lancaster Environment Centre Library Avenue Bailrigg, Lancaster LA1 4AP, United Kingdom @Aidan_M_Keith
Christophe Thebaud UMR “Evolution & Biological Diversity” CNRS & Univ Paul Sabatier F-31062 Toulouse France
Rafael D. Zenni Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology University of Tennessee Knoxville, TN USA
Natalie Cooper School of Natural Sciences Trinity College Dublin Dublin 2, Ireland
Philippe Desjardins-Proulx Université du Québec à Montréal Quebec Centre for Biodiversity Sciences Rimouski, Québec Canada
Lars Gamfeldt Deparment of Biological and Environmental Sciences University of Gothenburg Gothenburg, Sweden
Mark Hahnel figshare 4 Crinan Street London N1 9XW UK
Jessica Couture National Center for Ecological Analysis & Synthesis University of California, Santa Barbara 735 State Street, Suite 300 Santa Barbara, CA 93101-3351
Jarrod Cusens Institute for Applied Ecology New Zealand Auckland University of Technology 31-33 Symonds Street Auckland New Zealand
Steph Borrelle Institute for Applied Ecology New Zealand Auckland University of Technology 31-33 Symonds Street Auckland New Zealand
Nick Isaac NERC Centre for Ecology & Hydrology Wallingford OX10 9QA UK
Sally Keith ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies James Cook University Townsville, QLD 4811 Australia
Sarah Supp Department of Ecology and Evolution Stony Brook University 650 Life Sciences Building Stony Brook, NY 11794-5245
Jessica Blois School of Natural Sciences 5200 N. Lake Rd. Merced, CA 95343 USA
Mike Whitfield Botany, School of Natural Sciences Trinity College College Green Dublin 2 Ireland
Richard J. Butler School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences University of Birmingham Edgbaston Birmingham, B15 2TT
Jens Kattge Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry Hans Knoell Str. 10 07745 Jena Germany
Scott Chamberlain Biology Department Simon Fraser University Burnaby, BC, Canada V5A 1S6
Blaire Steven Bioscience Department Los Alamos National Laboratory Los Alamos, NM, USA, 87545
Santiago Soliveres Universidad Rey Juan Carlos Departamento de Biología y Geología Escuela Superior de Ciencias Experimentales y Tecnología C/ Tulipán s/n, Móstoles, 28933 SPAIN
Francis Brearley School of Science and the Environment Manchester Metropolitan University Chester Street Manchester M1 5GD UK
Michiel van Breugel Smithsonian Tropical research Institute Av. Rossevelt 401 Balboa, Ancon Panama, Panama
Dylan James Craven, PhD. Synthesis Centre for BioDiversity Sciences (sDiv) German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Leipzig, Germany