Citation Map Shows Top Science Cities

mikejuk writes "Which cities around the world produce not just the most but the best scientific papers? Using a database and Google Maps the answer is obvious. A paper at Physics arXiv describes how two researchers combined citation data with Google maps to create a plot showing how important cities around the world were in terms of their contribution to physics, chemistry or psychology."

misleading metrics

[Hazel Bergeron]

"Number of links" has always struck me as an odd metric (see also PageRank). The greatest work from the PoV of scientific advancement isn't necessarily the most cited. The greatest determinant will be how fashionable a particular field is - a few leading researchers in a particular field are likely to have a huge number of cites, especially if they constitently reach the well-known publications [plosone.org], but it doesn't necessarily mean the field is very scientifically interesting.

Then, even if great progress has been made, you get the effect that people don't necessarily cite the seminal investigations so much as the pioneering refiners.

Another interesting effect, of course, is the difference between provenance of researcher [fas.org] and location of publication [thomsonreuters.com]. The US and the UK are particularly good at draining other countries of already well-educated people, but this doesn't mean that the US or the UK have performed the academic preparation necessary to produce excellent researchers.

Word is for office girls

[Anonymous Coward]

In what software did they write the paper? Word 97? It is absolutly infuriating to see a scientific paper not written in TeX-based software.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Psychology Map May Be Incorrect

[schwnj]

In looking at the psychology map, I am suspicious that the authors made a minor error in their data collection. The database they used (Web of Science, Science Citation Index) does contain a category for psychology; however, it lists only the 71 psychology journals that are in the physiological/cognitive subfields of psychology. The overwhelming majority of psychology journals (almost 500 of them) are not in those fields, so the search should have also included the Social Science Citation Index data (also part of the Web of Science, just involves clicking another box). I suspect the authors only used the Science (and not Social Science) database because the data displayed on the map seems to over-represent programs that are strong in physio/cognitive, and under-represents (or ignores) programs that are strong in social, developmental, and clinical psychology.

Politically incorrect map

[shutdown -p now]

I wonder how long before someone slaps the map authors as being racist, as it is so obviously politically incorrect, with green largely clustered in US and Europe.