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[Le Bail Armel]

Identité Message:<4.0.1.19981027151451.00e9d8c0 at fluo.univ-lemans.fr>
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Date: Tue, 27 Oct 1998 16:39:28 +0100
To: chminf-l at listserv.indiana.edu,chemweb at ic.ac.uk
From: Armel Le Bail <armel at fluo.univ-lemans.fr>
Subject: Updating the ISI's most cited authors lists
Cc: alb at cristal.org
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Dear Colleagues,

Now almost one year that the ISI's most cited chemists (10858
cited at least 500 times) and physicists (1120 first) lists are
freely available at http://www.cristal.org/cit.html (US) or at
http://fluo.univ-lemans.fr:8001/cit.html (France).

The search engines were asked for ~13000 names/month
and various partial or full lists were downloaded ~2000/month
since December 1997, as a mean. Peoples may be interested by
the knowledge of their own rank or by the rank of colleagues.
Institutions may use those lists for evaluation. Students may
decide to make a post-doc according to informations from
those lists. Etc. For inverse reasons, there could be individuals
or groups working against those lists publication.

However, the lists gather citations in the range 1981-June 1997.
They are now outdated.

May I remember the story of the lists availability. Following
the publication of the 50 most cited chemists by D. Pendleburry
from ISI, it was clear that a full list of 10858 names had been
built. After discussions, I bought this full chemists list US$ 1000,
sharing the cost with a group of 36 colleagues. Then, ISI sent me
also the 10 first pages of the physicists list, for free. The Web
access was then tolerated.

There is unfortunately no evidence that ISI will distribute
updated lists (in spite of asking me for my search engine
PERL script and of being interested in the number of Web
access, month after month).

Maybe it is to the Scientific Community to insist for obtaining
them. They are at the ISI disposal, at the easy click of a button.
I did not obtained any answer to my recent queries about
updating. Some of you could have more influence...

Armel Le bail

PS - A huge correspondence was initiated by these lists
availability. Some typical comments are below :

>
> It is a pity that ISI is a for-profit organisation! You did a fine service=
=20
> to the community by making the list available. There should
> be a way that scientists have access to this information WITHOUT=20
> paying money for it!


>
>  I really appreciate what you did. This has been a wonderful service to=
 the=20
> community.
> I wonder if you have analyzed the data in anyway. More specifically is=20
> there even a rough relationship between total citations and rank? For=20
> example is a log-log plot of rank vs total citations linear? If so=20
> what is the slope? This would allow one to see eg if there is any real=20
> difference between being ranked 200 vs 400 or 1000 vs 3000 etc etc.
> Just a thought.


>
> Do you have available on line on the web a ranked=20
> list of the 10,000 or so most cited physicists?=20
> (like your list for chemists).
> For instance, all physicists with more than 500 citations.=20
> Many researchers and faculty members would be very, very=20
> interested in that list. Please let me know how to access it.


>
> Do you plan tu update the list?


>
> Great!!! Thanks a lot!! Your stuff is extremely interesting and=20
> we welcome your activities really gratefully.=20
> Would you mind to comment about my querries?
> a) Is the list of citations free of selfcitations?
> b) Do you involve journals dealing with electrochemistry?
> I miss some people on your list who are active in this field=20
> and who enjoy rather frequent quoting.


Etc

All the 1998 Nobel in Chemistry and Physics, but Kohn,
were inside these lists. Kohn being probably ranked >1120
in the physicists list (with a chemistry Nobel, and this suggests
some discrepancies between ISI and the Nobels about what
are exactly chemistry and physics :-)

Author(s) Name
               Average citation
                              Total articles
                                         Total citations
                                                      Rank by total
                                                         citations
TSUI DC
                    36.08
                                  184
                                             6638
                                                              71
STORMER HL
                    54.50
                                  98
                                             5341
                                                              133
LAUGHLIN RB
                    81.00
                                  46
                                             3726
                                                              374
POPLE JA
                    79.80
                                  176
                                             14044
                                                               2


Armel Le Bail - Universit=E9 du Maine, Laboratoire des Fluorures,
CNRS ESA 6010, Av. O. Messiaen, 72085 Le Mans Cedex 9, France
http://www.cristal.org/


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