Of course, a few dubiously motivated researchers, hoping to grab in any way they can the attention of department heads or potential employers, will seek out any device that may enhance their name recognition and beef up their c.v.'s. But this is clearly an abuse of citation analysis. Blaming a measurement method for its abuses is like blaming a badly used slide rule for the collapse of the Tacoma Bridge. Indeed, leading journals such as Nature , Science , and the New England Journal of Medicine rejected many manuscripts that ultimately were published elsewhere. Over time, they went on to be highly cited and very influential.
Citation analysis is a messenger.
He was particularly aggrieved that most of the papers had been published early in 1992, thus giving them more time than others to be referenced in subsequent works. Anyone who has studied the Institute for Scientific Information 's data over the years knows enough to make allowances for this obvious qualification.