Regensburg 2007 – scientific programme

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PV: Plenarvorträge

PV III

PV III: Special Session ``h-index''

Monday, March 26, 2007, 13:30–14:00, H1

Is it any good? Measuring scientific merit — •Philip Ball — Nature, 4-6 Crinan St, London N1 9XW, UK

How do we know if a paper is any good? How do you evaluate someone’s scientific output? Which is more praiseworthy: a solid piece of work in an established field, or a stimulating new hypothesis which may or may not be right? Who are the ’best’ scientists? The more deeply we probe into the question of quality in scientific research, the more contentious it becomes. That’s why it is useful to have objective measures of quality, so that assessment – an important aspect of any human enterprise – does not become a lottery of personal opinion. The measures commonly in use are generally based on citation analysis. But it is widely acknowledged that merely counting up the number of papers in Nature, Science and Physical Review Letters is not the best way of quantifying quality. What alternatives exist, and how good are they? Can there ever be a one-size-fits-all metric of the merit of one’s scientific output? In this talk I shall look at some of those that have been proposed, discuss what they tell us about the state of science (and of physics in particular), and ask where citation analysis – and the role of scientific publishing in general – seems to be heading.