Archives of Surgery, 104(3): 355, March 1972
Publish or Perish
To The Editor --
Having read the editorial in the ARCHIVES by Dr. Silen entitled "Publish or Perish" (103:1, 1971), might I refer you to the matter of publication counting vs citation counting.1
If you have not already done so, it might be very revealing to you to examine the "critique" implied by the specific citation of articles published in your journal that are listed in the Science Citation Index. The SCI is available in several libraries in the Boston area.
Your specific suggestion that critiques appear with articles is a good one. I myself recommended a similar procedure to a journal on whose editorial board I served; that is, the Journal of Chemical Documentation.
I found myself writing publishable critiques as a referee and suggested to the editor that it was absurd for these critiques to remain anonymous. I do not think that referees should remain anonymous, even though I know of a few cases where this might be necessary for a particular individual in order to avoid loss of friendship. In that case, referees should be found who do not need to remain anonymous.
Eugene Garfield, Ph.D.
President
Institute for Scientific Information
Philadelphia, PA 19106
Reference:
1. back to text Garfield E: Publication counting vs citation counting in evaluating research. Current Contents, June 2, 1971, p.5-7.