The h-index is no longer an effective correlate of scientific reputation

The impact of individual scientists is commonly quantified using citation-based measures. The most common such measure is the h-index. A scientist’s h-index affects hiring, promotion, and funding decisions, and thus shapes the progress of science. Here we report a large-scale study of scientometric measures, analyzing millions of articles and hundreds of millions of citations across four scientific fields and two data platforms. We find that the correlation of the h-index with awards that indicate recognition by the scientific community has substantially declined. These trends are associated with changing authorship patterns. We show that these declines can be mitigated by fractional allocation of citations among authors, which has been discussed in the literature but not implemented at scale. We find that a fractional analogue of the h-index outperforms other measures as a correlate and predictor of scientific awards. Our results suggest that the use of the h-index in ranking scientists should be reconsidered, and that fractional allocation measures such as h-frac provide more robust alternatives.

Antropología periférica

Desde Estonia, un país situado en la periferia de Europa (y donde la Antropología tiene una tradición limitada), el artículo analiza lo que significa ser ‘periférico’ dentro de la antropología europea: ¿Hablamos de relevancia, capacitación, tipo de colaboraciones, restricciones disciplinarias, relación de dependencia, mecanismos de in/visibilidad, reputación científica o de financiación? El artículo concluye con una nota positiva, indicando que los márgenes globales del conocimiento también se pueden convertir en centros de producción teórica a su manera, sea como plataforma de experimentación o como hub regional. También indica que hay una forma distinta de reflexividad en las periferias, más vernácula y experimental. From Estonia, a country located on the periphery of Europe (and where Anthropology has a limited tradition, the article analyzes what it means to be ‘peripheral’ within European anthropology: Are we talking about relevance, training, type of collaborations, disciplinary restrictions, dependency relationship, mechanisms of in/visibility, scientific reputation or funding? The article concludes on a positive note, stating that the global peripheries of knowledge can also become centers of knowledge production in their own way, either as a platform for experimentation or as a regional hub. Also that there is a different form of reflexivity in the peripheries, more vernacular and experimental.

From Grub Street to the Colony: George William Francis and an early Victorian scientific career

This article focuses on the early scientific career of George William Francis (1800–1865), a London-born botanist who later emigrated to Australia and founded the Adelaide Botanic Garden. Most scholarly works about Francis emphasize his botanical contributions or life in Australia, yet overlook his career before middle age in England as a versatile popular writer, editor and lecturer. His involvement in the venture of ‘commercial science’, or the display and exploitation of knowledge, reflects a career route for a non-elite practitioner to earn a living and build scientific reputation in early Victorian gentlemanly science. The venture included his establishment of the popular journal The Magazine of Science and School of Arts (1839–1852). He also associated himself with the network of the scientific elites by communicating to the learned, such as the pre-eminent botanist William Hooker. By examining the distinctive trajectory of Francis's career, this essay explores the potential and limits of such strategies to gain institutional recognition from the scientific community in the pre-professionalized period.

Eating game: proteins, international conservation and the rebranding of African wildlife, 1955–1965

Around 1960, leading figures in the international conservation circuit – such as Julian Huxley, Frank Fraser Darling and E. Barton Worthington – successfully propagated new visions about the value of undomesticated African mammals. Against traditional ideas, they presented these mammals as a highly efficient source of protein for growing African populations. In line with this vision, they challenged non-interventionist ideals of nature preservation, and launched proposals for active management through game ‘ranching’ and ‘cropping’. As such, they created a new socio-technical imaginary for Africa's future, in which the consumption of wildlife meat took up a central position. This article explores the motivations of Western conservationists for this drastic rebranding. It argues that the rationale of considering African wildlife in terms of protein played an important symbolical role at various levels. It was crucial in the reorganization of the transnational networks of conservation, but also in the boosting of their scientific reputation, in the restructuring of their institutional ties, and in their attempts to maintain an authoritative position for Western ecologists in a rapidly decolonizing world.

Guy Dodson. 13 January 1937—24 December 2012

Guy Dodson's scientific reputation is based on his seminal contributions to linking chemistry and biology through analyses of three-dimensional structures elucidated by crystallography. He inspired and supported the development of new methods to determine structure, to relate structure to chemical mechanism and to embed structural insights into the lexicon of biological research. He began his career working with Dorothy Hodgkin, at the University of Oxford, and in later life he set up two very successful structural biology laboratories, at the University of York and then at the National Institute of Medical Research, Mill Hill. He is particularly remembered for his research into improving insulin therapy, based on modifications suggested by structural insights. He showed early recognition of how to build synergy in industrial collaborations that led both to fundamental scientific discoveries and to the development of new medicines and products to benefit society. He is also remembered for the enthusiasm he brought to these studies, for the pleasure he got, and gave, from the successes of others, and his generosity of spirit.

RAD52: Viral Friend or Foe?

Mammalian Radiation Sensitive 52 (RAD52) is a gene whose scientific reputation has recently seen a strong resurgence. In the past decade, RAD52, which was thought to be dispensable for most DNA repair and recombination reactions in mammals, has been shown to be important for a bevy of DNA metabolic pathways. One of these processes is termed break-induced replication (BIR), a mechanism that can be used to re-start broken replication forks and to elongate the ends of chromosomes in telomerase-negative cells. Viruses have historically evolved a myriad of mechanisms in which they either conscript cellular factors or, more frequently, inactivate them as a means to enable their own replication and survival. Recent data suggests that Adeno-Associated Virus (AAV) may replicate its DNA in a BIR-like fashion and/or utilize RAD52 to facilitate viral transduction and, as such, likely conscripts/requires the host RAD52 protein to promote its perpetuation.

I ANLEDNING 300-ÅRSJUBILEET: JOHAN ERNST GUNNERUS OG “AGDERS GUNNERUS” – ET BIDRAG TIL Å FORSTÅ HVORFOR BISKOP GUNNERUS FORESLO ET NORSK UNIVERSITET I KRISTIANSAND I 1771

The paper is written in connection with the 2018 300th anniversary of the birth of the professor and bishop, Johan Ernst Gunnerus (1718–1773), who founded modern science in Norway and who, in 1760, also founded the first learned society in the country: The Royal Norwegian Society of Sciences and Letters in Trondheim. In 1758 Professor Gunnerus was appoined the bishop for the whole of northern Norway, as the bishop of Trondheim. In 1771 Bishop Gunnerus was called to the capital of the then Danish-Norwegian kingdom, Copenhagen, with the mission of reforming the Copenhagen university, at that time the only university in the entire dual kingdom. In his recommendation for reforms of the university, he also included a proposal for the establishment of a university in Norway. In this proposal, he argued for the city of Kristiansand as the most suitable location for that university. If the King would follow his recommendation, he would himself move to Kristiansand and also bring with him the Royal Society from Trondheim. Many people have subsequently wondered why he chose to point to Kristiansand for the establishment of the first Norwegian university, and not Oslo (where the university was finally opened in 1813) or Trondheim (where he had founded the Royal Society 11 years earlier). It has been thought that Gunnerus suggested Kristiansand mainly because the fact that the city was close to Denmark and a university there could perhaps have also recruited students from northern Jutland. Some have even suggested that Gunnerus proposed Kristiansand because he knew it would not be acceptable to Copenhagen or to the King, and then Trondheim (his “real” wish) could then emerge as a more plausible candidate, even if it was situated rather far north. In this paper, I argue that until now everybody who has discussed Gunnerus' choice of location for a Norwegian university has missed one decisive point: before Gunnerus moved from Copenhagen (where he was professor) to Trondheim (as bishop), Kristiansand was known in Norway, Denmark and the rest of Europe as the Norwegian centre for science and research. This was due to just one man, Bishop Jens Christian Spidberg (1684–1762). I show how Spidberg established himself through international publications as the leading scientist in Norway, and how everybody with a scientific question during the first half of the 18th century looked to Kristiansand and Spidberg for the answer. This, I argue, gaveKristiansand an academic and scientific reputation that Gunnerus was very well aware of and could exploit in his recommendation of Kristiansand as the location for the first Norwegian university. However, this knowledge about this reputation of Kristiansand’s in the first half of the 18th century has since been lost completely, mostly because Gunnerus’ fundamental seminal contribution in the second half of the 18th century has completely overshadowed the academic situation in Norway before his time. Finally in 2007 a university, the University of Agder, was established in Kristiansand, on the basis of a university college with academic roots going back to 1828. An academy of science, the Agder Academy of Sciences and Letters, was founded in 2002. A formal agreement of cooperation between the Royal Society and the then university college was signed 2001, and the academy joined the agreement in 2005. This agreement confirmed the long academic ties between Kristiansand and Trondheim, going all the way back to the scientific positions first held by Spidberg in Kristiansand and then by Gunnerus in Trondheim.

Quality and Productivity

Authors need to write productively while maintaining quality standards. Productivity pushed too far however can negatively influence quality, which can mean publication in less demanding journals and a lowering in one’s scientific reputation. This chapter discusses the essentials of quality and productivity.