{"id":19807,"date":"2022-04-03T16:24:05","date_gmt":"2022-04-03T14:24:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.wjst.de\/blog\/?p=19807"},"modified":"2022-04-03T16:24:17","modified_gmt":"2022-04-03T14:24:17","slug":"worthless-citation-counts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wjst.de\/blog\/sciencesurf\/2022\/04\/worthless-citation-counts\/","title":{"rendered":"Worthless citation counts?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>from <a href=\"https:\/\/referee3.org\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">referee3<\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Even citation counts, the supposed gold standard, are close to worthless: only a tiny fraction of citations represent serious evaluation or validation, whereas the great majority represent nothing more than lazy copying and fashion-following. Two anecdotes demonstrate just how worthless citation counts can be:Some of the most highly-cited researchers in the world have been exposed as\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/d41586-020-00335-7\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\"gaming the charlatans gaming the citation system (opens in a new tab)\">gaming the citation system<\/a>\u00a0and as charlatans. <a href=\"https:\/\/psycnet.apa.org\/record\/1996-06400-003\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\"Papers with thousands of citations (opens in a new tab)\">Papers with thousands of citations<\/a>\u00a0turn out to be\u00a0false; obviously not one of those citations represented a serious validation.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div class=\"bottom-note\">\n  <span class=\"mod1\">CC-BY-NC Science Surf , accessed 21.05.2026<\/span>\n <\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>from referee3 Even citation counts, the supposed gold standard, are close to worthless: only a tiny fraction of citations represent serious evaluation or validation, whereas the great majority represent nothing more than lazy copying and fashion-following. Two anecdotes demonstrate just how worthless citation counts can be:Some of the most highly-cited researchers in the world have &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wjst.de\/blog\/sciencesurf\/2022\/04\/worthless-citation-counts\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Worthless citation counts?<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[2670],"class_list":["post-19807","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-philosophy-of-science","tag-impact-factor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wjst.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19807","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wjst.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wjst.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wjst.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wjst.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19807"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.wjst.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19807\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19809,"href":"https:\/\/www.wjst.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19807\/revisions\/19809"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wjst.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19807"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wjst.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19807"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wjst.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19807"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}