Ranking 3-2010 Lab Times page 47
Don’t be misled by citation figures! (23)
Long Maturation Times Labware Life Science Chemicals
R
assie was a taxonomist. For the past 28 years he had been keeping his university
chair warm. Finally, he had been invited to give a big lecture – the topic: the role
of taxonomy in the modern life sciences.
Rassie wrestled with his conscience and pondered about what he should actually say.
One point, in particular, angered him a lot about this subject: in his view, over the last
ten to 15 years, the way life science research was done had taken a sharp turn for the
worse. In fact, it had developed into an increasingly short-winded enterprise. “Research
is becoming ever more asthmatic,” he normally liked to ridicule.
For certain, one of the many consequences was an increase in the number of people
doing life-science research; exponentially the number of researchers had risen over the
last couple of decades. Logically, in this way, competition had grown dramatically and
especially the young people in this “rat race” were virtually forced to publish faster and
faster in order to keep their heads above water.
The paradox, however, was that for taxonomy in
particular this was simply not true. The number of
taxonomists had even been steadily declining dur-
ing that same period. Therefore, the taxonomic lit-
erature was “aging” much slower and their findings ... supplies
weren’t washed out of peoples’ heads by a flood of
subsequent papers as quickly as in most other life
science disciplines. On the contrary, most species
ready-to-use
descriptions can still be dated back to before 1900
and are still relevant today. Thus, it was clear that reagents and
the average age of references in current taxonom-
ic publications would be much higher than in other
disciplines.
It was for this reason that Rassie was always an-
CHEMICALS
noyed when someone approached him with impact
factors and citation analyses. And so it was that, for everyday use
deep within, Rassie had already decided that he
would talk about exactly that issue at the lecture –
despite any lingering reservations he may have had.
and for special
Coincidentally, he had just come across two
wonderful studies the day before. The first one analysed almost 2,100 references that applications.
were all listed in seven comprehensive taxonomic review articles from the last year – and
finally revealed a mean “reference age” of 61 years with a median of 36 years. Similar-
ly, another author identified an even better mean “reference age” of about 45 years in
shorter taxonomic research papers. With these figures at hand, Rassie thought, it should All products can
become obvious to everyone that it’s just utter nonsense to assess taxonomic journals by
applying that “breathless” impact factor method, which takes into account only the pre- also be found in our
vious two years. Especially, when comparing them with journals from molecular or cel-
lular biology, for example. INTERNET-SHOPS!
In addition, Rassie would top-off the whole effort using his own PhD thesis as the
perfect example. After all, his PhD paper had slumbered in the dark for almost twen-
ty years until it suddenly began to rise to one of the most-cited taxonomic papers ever –
+ News
only because, out of the blue, one of the worms he had described became an important + Special prices
model organism for studying a specific developmental problem.
And while Rassie was thinking about all that, another idea came to mind. Most of the
“
audience would be plant researchers. And what was the clear number one model plant?
ab-foxes
Arabidopsis thaliana. He would ask the audience: “Who among you has heard of the Cu nning „l
ROTH
name Johannes Thal?” He was sure that at best only a few would know, if anyone. “Well, order at
Johannes Thal was the first to describe Arabidopsis thaliana as a species, in the 16th cen-
tury,” he would smugly reply. “Actually, I guess most of you would have had to quote
Carl Roth GmbH + Co. KG
him.” Schoemperlenstraße 3-5 _ D-76185 Karlsruhe
Rassie smiled. Suddenly, he started really looking forward to the lecture. Tel: (+49)721/5606 0 _ Fax: (+49)721/5606 149
Ralf Neumann E-Mail: info@carlroth.com _ Internet: www.carlroth.com