From Signtometrics to Scientometrics: A Cautionary Tale of Our Times

Abstract

It is but a short journey from citation indexing to citation analysis and thence to evaluative bibliometrics. This paper outlines the path and describes how the time-honored practice of affixing bibliographic references to scholarly articles has paved the way for a culture of accounting to establish itself in contemporary academia.

Keywords

• Citation indexing
• bibliometrics
• citation analysis
• scientometrics
• bibliographic references
• evaluation
• research assessment