Sir
You report that scientific papers from the United Kingdom have been cited on average 4.19 times but that those from Japan notch up only 3.18 citations (Nature 387 537; 537 1997). Do these relative scores reflect more than the reading (and non-reading) habits of Americans, who themselves dominate the writing (and citing) of scientific literature?
A paper's ‘impact factor’ measures, as much as anything else, how visible and accessible it is in the United States. It would be misleading and unfair to our Japanese colleagues to infer a genuine ‘quality gap’ from bibliographic data of this kind.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Rees, M. Skewed citations. Nature 388, 710 (1997). https://doi.org/10.1038/41864
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/41864