Abstract
This paper reports an investigation into the referencing pattern of Brazilian agricultural scientists. The study was based on the use of both quantitative data-citations appearing in a sizeable sample of articles published by these scientists—and qualitative data-interviews with a large number of scientists who authored the source, papers. The aim was to explore the extent to which citation counts may be taken as valid indicators of the quality, influence or impact of published scientific knowledge in the general context of a scientifically peripheral country. The findings presented confirm the view that in this context, citation patterns are significantly influenced by factors “external” to the scientific realm and, thus, reflect neither simply the quality, influence nor even the impact of the research work referred to.
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Quality of scientific output is referred here as the attribute of a scientific paper which has been subject to judgement by the scientific community to decide on the truth of particular research findings. See: N. G. GILBERT, Measuring the growth of science.Scientometrics, 1 (1978) 9.
M. J. MORAVCSIK, Measures of scientific growth,Research Policy, 2 (1973) 266, has suggested that there are three aspects of science which may be measured: scientific activity, scientific productivity and scientific progress.
E. GARFIELD,Citation Indexing: Its Theory and Application in Science, Technology and the Humanities. John Wiley & Sons, New York, 1979. Ch. 6; K. E. CLARK (1957) cited in: J. COLE, S. COLE, Measuring the quality of sociological research: Problems in the use of the Science Citation Index,The American Sociologist, 6 (1971) 23.
J. R. COLE, Patterns of intellectual influence in sicentific research,Sociology of Education, 43 (1970) 381.
B. C. GRIFFITH, H. G. SMALL, J. A. STONEHILL, S. DEY, The structure of scientific literatures, II: Toward a macro- and microstructure for science,Science Studies, 4 (1974) 364.
W. FAULKNER,Indicators of National Scientific Performance: Methods, Problems and Possibilities, unpublished MSc dissertation, University of Sussex, SPRU, 1981, p. 43.
M. MULKAY, Methodology in the sociology of science: Some reflections on the study of radio astronomy. In: G. LAMAINE (Ed.),Perspectives on the Emergence of Scientific Disciplines, Mouton, The Hague, Paris, 1976, p. 211.
Ibid.; see also: D. CRANE.Invisible Colleges, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago & London, 1975 (2nd. ed.), p. 20.
M. J. MORAVCSIK, A progress report on the quantification, of science.,Journal of Scientific and Industrial Research (India), 36 (1976) 12, has suggested that the number of citations a publication receives is a measure of its impact on subsequent research papers. This idea has been extended and developed more in-depth by J. IRVINE, B. MARTIN. Es Possible Valorar la Investigacion Pura?,Mundo Cientifico, 12 (1982) no. 11, 182.
D. EDGE, Quantitative measures of communication in science: A critical review,History of Science, 17 (1979) no. 36, 122.
Ibid, pp. 110–1.
M. MULKAY,op. cit. note 7. In: G. LAMAINE (Ed.),Perspectives on the Emergence of Scientific Disciplines, Mouton, The Hague, Paris, 1976, pp. 210–1.
See: J. D. FRAME, F. NARIN, M. P. CARPENTER, The distribution of world science,Social Studies of Science, 7 (1977) 501., for a fairly clear picture of which are the “central” and “peripheral” scientific nations of the world. S. ARUNACHALAM, S. MARKANDAY, Science in the middle-level countries: A bibliometric analysis of scientific journals of Australia, Canada, India and Israel,Journal of Information Science, 3 (1981) 13, have proposed a third group of “middle-level” countries (from the point of view of scientific output), lying between the central and peripheral scientific nations.
J. D. FRAME, Measuring scientific activity in lesser, developed countries.Scientometrics, 2 (1980) 133; Y. M. RABKIN, H. INHABER, Science on the periphery: A citation study of three less developed countries,Scientometrics, 1 (1979) 261; Y. M. RABKIN, T. O. EISEMON, J. J. LAFITTE-HOUSSAT, E. M. RATHGEBER, Citation visibility of Africa's science,Social Studies of Science, 9 (1979) 499.
For a discussion of the bias of the ISI database in favour of scientifically central nations, see: W. FAULKNER, op. cit. note 6Indicators of National Scientific Performance: Methods, Problems and Possibilities unpublished MSc dissertation, University of Sussex, SPRU, 1981; L. VELHO, Como medir a ciencia?Revista Brasileira de Tecnologia, 16 (1985) 35.
J. D. FRAME, F. NARIN, M. P. CARPENTER,.op. cit. note 13, for example, have shown that although the scientifically productive nations follow a similar “product mix” with regard to basic science, there is significant variation between them and all of the East European countries and many of the Third World countries.
L. VELHO, J. KRIGE. Publication and citation practices of Brazilian agricultural scientists,Social Studies of Science, 14 (1984) 45.
According to E. GARFIELD, Third World research. Part 1,Current Contents, (August 15, 1983) no. 33, 5–15, Brazil ranks third amongst Third World countries, in terms of the number of articles produced by its scientists.
See, for example, A. J. HERZOG.Colleague Networks, Institutional Roles and the International Transfer of Scientific Knowledge: the Case of Ireland, unpublished PhD. dissertation, Massachussetts Institute of Technology, 1975, N. W. STORER, The internationality of science and the nationality of scientists,International Social Science Journal, 22 (1970) 89.
W. KROHN W. SCHAFER, The origins and structure of agricultural chemistry, In: G. LEMAINE (Ed.),Perspectives on the Emergence of Scientific Disciplines, Mouton, The Hague, Paris, 1976. p. 49.
C. DE MOURA CASTRO, F. SPAGNOLO, Science and Scientists in Agriculture: the Brazilian Case, paper presented at the Tercier Seminario Internacional de Investigacion Educativa, Mexico, February, 1982. p. 2.
J. PASTORE, E. R. A. ALVES. Reforming the Brazilian agricultural research system, In: T. M. ARNDT, D. G. DALRYMPLE, V. W. RUTTAN (Eds),Resource Allocation and Productivity in National and International Agricultural Research, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1977, pp. 394–403.
C. DE MOURA CASTRO, F. SPAGNOLO, op. cit. note 22, Science and Scientists in Agriculture: the Brazilian Case, paper presented at the Tercier Seminario Internacional de Investigacion Educativa, Mexico, February, 1982, p. 12.
Y. M. RABKIN, H. INHABER,op. cit. note 14, p. 264.
WOOD, cited in: J. A. LARGE,The Foreign Language Barrier: Problems in Scientific Communication, Deutsch, London, 1983, p. 15.
WIPIS: Who Is Publishing In Science is a publication by the Institute for Scientific Information which contains the names of the authors recorded inCurrent Contents each year.
Y. M. RABKIN, H. INHABER,op. cit. note 14, p. 264.
—, 265.
Webel andLonquist's results as well as those ofPaterniani were published in the same periodical:Crop Science [WEBEL and LONQUIST,Crop Science, 7 (1967) 651; PATERNIANI,Crop Science, 7 (1967) 212]. Thus, it seems that even when a researcher from a peripheral country reports his findings in advanced country periodicals, the truth of his findings may be doubted by his peers in central countries. Moreover, I must say that I checked on these informations and I was able to obtain a copy of the handout where the statements referred to were made.
J. IRVINE, B. MARTIN,op. cit. note 9
Y. M. RABKIN, H. INHABER,op. cit. note 14, p. 271, for example, found that 73% of the references by Brazilian scientists were to work published in scientifically central nations. Only about 1% of their references were to material published in other Latin American countries and 17% of the references were to Brazilian scientists. E. F. FUENZALIDA,Investigacion Cientifica y Estratificacion Internacional, Editorial Andres Bello, Santiago de Chile, 1971, and M. ROCHE, Y. FREITES. Produccion y flujo de informacion cientifica en un pais periferico Americano (Venezuela),Interciencia, 7 (1982) 279, also report similar findings.
H. M. COLLINS. The TEA set: Tacit knowledge and scientific networks,Science Studies, 4 (1974) 165, suggested that competition, between several British laboratories building a TEA laser influenced these laboratories' relative indifference to each other's work and their unwillingness to be completely open about their own progress.
The exceptions are the Agronomic Institute of Campinas (IAC)—see L. VELHO, J. KRIGE, op. cit. note 18.—and some specific research centres of EMBRAPA. Scientists of the universities studied seemed to have a certain degree of awareness of the work conducted in the above institutes and made some references to it.
J. A. LARGE,op. cit. note 33, p. 15.
A. M. R. ABOU-ID,Produçâo no Centro de Ciências Agrárias da Universidade Federal de Viçosa, unpublished MSc dissertation, UFV, 1982, p. 99.
The Abstracts mentioned by the interviewees as the most heavily used were:Current Contents; Agriculture, Biology & Environmental Sciences, which indexes only 5 Brazilian periodicals of which only 1—Pesquisa Agropecuaria Brasileira, published by EMBRAPA-publishes articles related to the subfields of this study;Horticultural Abstracts, Field Crop Abstracts/Herbage Abstracts, Plant Breeding Abstracts, Soils and Fertilizers andWeed Abstracts. The last 4 are published by the Commonwealth Agricultural Bureax, UK, which indexes 135 Brazilian serial titles in agriculture. However, the most important Brazilian journal in soil science,Revista Brasileira de Ciencia do Solo, is not used as source by this organisation; neither isCiencia Agronomica, the agricultural scientific journal edited by UFC.
Current Contents: Agriculture, Biology & Environmental Sciences covers more than 1200 publications each year; 0.4% of them emanate from Brazil. In the same vein, out of the over 10000 serial titles covered by the Commonwealth Agricultural Bureax's publications, only about 1% emanate from Brazil.
C. DE MOURA CASTRO, F. SPAGNOLO, op. cit. note 22, Science and Scientists in Agriculture: the Brazilian Case, paper presented at the Tercier Seminario Internacional de Investigacion Educativa, Mexico, February, 1982. p. 8.
J. A. LARGE,op. cit. note 33, pp. 35–6.
Similarly, M. J. MORAVCSIK, P. MURUGESAN, Some results on the function and quality of citations,Social Studies of Science, 5 (1975) 86, set about to quantify the “error” in the use of citation counts as a measure of quality. Of the references occuring in a random sample of articles fromPhysical Review between 1968 and 1972, they found as many as 31% to be “redundant” (all cited in support, of the same point) and of, the remainder, 41% were “perfunctory” (not vital to the development of the citing paper).
For a discussion of the general point that citations can be used as a tool of persuasion, see G. N. GILBERT, Referencing as persuasion,Social Studies of Science, 7 (1977) 113.
For a discussion of the notion of transference of prestige through citation see R. D. WHITLEY Communication nets in science,Sociological Review, 17 (1969) 219.
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Velho, L. The “meaning” of citation in the context of a scientifically peripheral country. Scientometrics 9, 71–89 (1986). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02016609
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02016609