The h-index, the citation rating, impact factors and the aspiring researcher

摘要

Innumerable scientific experiments have clearly demonstrated that all living creatures, from the amoeba upwards, will, if offered a choice between rewards and penalties, choose the path which brings rewards. Laboratory rats, when they learn that pressing a pedal produces a food pellet, happily go on pressing, and bring up their offspring to do the same. Though their outward behaviour may sometimes bely it, university academics are even brighter than Wistar white rats, and therefore adapt themselves even more promptly to any system that brings them rewards.Clearly, some impartial method has to be used for selecting academics for appointment, for promotion, and, most especially, for the distribution of research funding. Without one there is a very strong risk of nepotism and favouritism, leading to unsuitable appointments. This was found, for example, in the early Victorian era. The civil service had to be expanded considerably in order to find suitable posts for all the Fitzroy family - the illegitimate children of the previous monarch. By the time of the Crimean war, the resulting chaos had become so obvious that following up earlier suggestions by Bentham (1822, reprinted 1993), Northcote and Trevelyan (1853) set up a system of competitive examination, based on the classical Chinese model. As there was no obvious method of proving that an expert in, say, botany was "better" than an expert in history, the examination was based on a knowledge of classical literature.