Comps readings this week McCain, K. W. (1990). Mapping authors in intellectual space: A technical overview. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 41(6), 433-443.
Highly recommended. Pretty short, straight to the point, software references are of course dated, but not so much so that you can't figure out a current equivalent. Explains what the deal is with ACA - both the raw graph, how to get the authors, and then how to do similarity measures and display the information.

Glanzel, W., & Moed, H. F. (2002). Journal impact measures in bibliometric research. Scientometrics, 53(2), 171-193.
Pretty straight forward review. Easy to read. One thing that I believe but that surprises me (hadn't occurred to me before):

ISI classifies documents into types. In calculating the numerator of the IF, ISI counts citations to all types of documents, whereas as citable documents in the denominator ISI includes as a standard only normal articles, notes, and reviews. However, editorials, letters and several other types are cited rather frequently in a number of journals. (p.181)

Really?! Makes sense, but hmmm. Apparently really inflates Lancet ("real" IF would be 43% lower).
Also nice discussion of issues with the IF, journal aging/productivity (cited half-life really isn't appropriate), some of the other options (and speculations why they haven't caught on), can't use normal distributions - have to use Pareto or other skewed (negative binomial, geometric, Poisson...)- to compare IFs.

DeSanctis, G., & Poole, M. S. (1994). Capturing the complexity in advanced technology use: Adaptive structuration theory. Organization Science, 5(2), 121-147.
Oh, the horror. I guess I just don't get it. Seemed to be covering the same ground as some of the social informatics pieces...

Borgman, C. L., & Furner, J. (2002). Scholarly communication and bibliometrics. In B. Cronin (Ed.), Annual Review of Information Science and Technology (ARIST) (pp. 2-72). Medford,NJ: Information Today. doi:10.1002/aris.1440360102
I think I've read parts of this on at least 3 other occasions, but it was important to read from end to end.

2 Chapters of Downey, G. L. (1998). The machine in me: An anthropologist sits among computer engineers. New York: Routledge.
This warrants more discussion, but that will keep for its own post.

Slight slow down here in the reading process as 1) life continually intrudes, sigh, and 2) slides are getting prepared (I spent a bunch of time trying to make prettier graph pictures based on some oblique criticism of a very well known info viz guy, but oh well!)

Labels: comps

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