Weighing the Value of Physical Review Citation Statistics

DEC 01, 2005

Bryan Suits

Sidney Redner’s analysis of citation statistics appears well thought out, but the assumption that the number of Physical Review citations to other Physical Review papers is even an “approximate proxy of scientific quality” is dubious at best. One nice example is Felix Bloch’s 1954 paper showing that sample rotation during a nuclear magnetic resonance measurement can greatly increase the spectral resolution. ¹ According to PROLA, the Physical Review Online Archive, Bloch’s paper has been cited in PR a total of six times. However, his result is routinely used for all high-resolution NMR and is the parent for many other developments in the field. I do not think this example is isolated.

References

1. F. Bloch, Phys. Rev. 94, 496 (1954) https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRev.94.496.2 .

More about the Authors

Bryan Suits. Michigan Technological University, Houghton, US .