Assessing importance and value

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Efficiency, effectiveness, value for money, importance - these seem to be the mantras of the present age. They are applied to all areas of human activity, including science, yet finding scientifically robust and independent methods of assessing them is difficult. In science how can we show that one group is more effective than another, that the ideas of one individual are more important than those of others, that money invested in one type of research provides better value than in another? In industry the success of most research is measured in new products and profits. But for blue-skies research whose outputs are papers in the scientific literature, the IS1 Citation Index and its various derivatives is still the principal quantitative method used. Its inadequacies for assessments have been detailed - wrong names, linked groups, variable half lives for different subjects, over citation of review and method papers etc. Yet, such is the simplicity ofthe system, many still use the citation value to decide on the destination of their next submission or the value of previously published material.