Sidebar:The Most-Cited Chemistry Papers of 1991-93
Following is Science Watch's report, written for the newsletter by John Emsley, science writer in residence at the department of chemistry, Imperial College, London. The article is reprinted with the permission of Science Watch and ISI, its publisher.
Government agencies need an objective assessment of the scientists and research that they are expected to fund. So do independent or charity-based research institutes, whose trustees must also closely monitor what their staff is achieving. And so does industry--although people there are often better placed to understand what is going on, whom to sponsor, and what the return on the investment will be.
The Science Citation Index (SCI) provides one means of objective assessment. SCI logs every new paper as it appears and subsequently records its citations by other researchers. In general, the more a paper is cited, the more important that piece of work is.
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