Translated material
Rins continues to lie
A year ago, the Trinity Option published an article by Rashit Khantemirov [1] , which contains severe criticism of the Russian scientific citation index (RINC), and the response to it of one of the developers of the RSCI General Director of the Scientific Electronic Library (NEB) Gennady Eremenko [2] . In response to Rinz, his developer shifted responsibility to the scientists themselves: they say, they are bad with scientific ethics, they are accustomed to cheating, and Rins, like a mirror, reflects what is.
Alas, Mr. Eremenko is only partially right. Although the concepts of honesty and ethics in our time, indeed, are not guided by everyone, and not only in science, the serious fault for the distortions of the Rinza lies on the developers. And the year that passed after the publication of the mentioned materials showed that they were not going to do work on mistakes. I will give examples related to the problem of namesakes.
I often look at the section “Automation and Computing Technique” Rinz, I look at who and how quotes my work and colleagues. This helps to expand the area of potential applications of our results. Most of the most cited authors are familiar to me well: the world is cramped, and the circle is narrow. But sometimes new names arise, which, of course, attracts attention.
For example, this summer I was surprised to find that the second on citation in my native time unexpectedly became a certain Harutyun Avetisyan from the Institute of System Programming (RAS RAS), who has 236 publications with the total number of quotes 8787. On the site of the RAS RAS, nothing was able to find out, but, fortunately, the site of “famous scientists” (Famus Scientists) [3] said that Cand. physical. Sciences A.I. Avetisyan have 33 publications, of which 9 - in magazines from the VAK list and 22 - in Russian. I began to view the list of citation of A. I. Avetisyan in the RSCI and was surprised even more: out of 236 publications recorded for Harutyun Ishkhanovich, he owns only about 30 that really related to his field: analysis and software architecture. What is the matter?
It turns out that the co -author of the remaining publications related to high energies physics and published by the giant ATLAS collaboration is Aram Avetisyan, who graduated from the graduate school of the University of Boston in 2007 and now working in Tsern. Many of the articles of the ATLAS collaboration are devoted to urgent problems related to the search for the Higgs boson, they are quoted tens and hundreds of times. For example, the article [4] has more than 1000 co -authors of 175 organizations and is quoted 296 times.
Another example. Offer 4th place in the list of the most cited automation specialists and computer technology Svetlana Tymoshenko from the Institute of Problems of Information Transfer them. A. A. Kharkevich (Ippi RAS) has 33 publications that are quoted 5289 times. And then the Rins begins to get confused in the testimony. Clicking on the name of the author, we will see that 33 publications Svetlana Petrovna have only 457 citation. However, the IPPI RAS website claims that it has only 10 publications, which, in essence, is not bad if you take into account that Svetlana Petrovna, judging by the IPPI website, is a researcher without a degree and began to publish recently, in 2008.
The mystery is solved with a fugitive viewing of the list of citation. It turns out that most of the quotations belong to the works of the famous specialist in theoretical and applied mechanics Stepan Tymoshenko, the author of many articles and books that emigrated in the United States in 1922. Rins ascribes to Svetlana Petrovna the articles of Stepan Prokofievich even the 1920s, when Svetlana Petrovna, judging by her date of birth on the Ipppi website, was not in the world.
An example is the third. 7th place in the same list with 129 publications and 3807 citation is occupied by Valery Zakharov (1934–2005), who worked within 36 years in the computing center named after A. A. Dorodnitsyn (VC RAS) and engaged in intellectual management systems. By opening a list of publications, we see that about a dozen of them belong to chemistry and belong to Art. scientific. sore. The Department of General Chemistry of Moscow State University V.N. Zakharov, there are publications by V. I. Zakharov and even the publication of a wonderful scientist, academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences V.E. Zakharov, dedicated mainly to nonlinear physics. I must say that I noticed the absurdities on the page of V. N. Zakharov a few more years in and wrote about them in the RINC on November 30, 2012 and March 25, 2013. He also wrote about other mistakes noticed, but he never received an answer.
Representatives of the RSCE to public criticism usually answer that you need to register in their system and correct mistakes themselves. Yes, in the above cases, the authors are not registered, and those who departed will never be able to do this. But other, living people who are either non-checked with bibliographic indicators, or “take away” them from others, do not know about possible accusations of crooking.
Yes, and the developers are cunning, as the next, fourth example shows. 17th place in the list is taken by Kand. physical. Sciences Vladimir Shin from the Institute of Informatics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, specialist in stochastic systems. It has 471 publication, 2634 citation and registered with Science Index. It would seem that everything should be clean here. But no: more than half of publications and, in response, citation belongs to another scientist: a W. Shin specialist from Advanced Photonics Research Institute, Korea; Ecology Specialist W. Shin from Department of Biology, Chungnam National University; The chemistry specialist W. Shin from Sogang University and others. Thus, registration does not help. Perhaps the man wrote to them, asked not to disgrace him, attributing other people's publications, but the Rins did not descend to discussions and corrections.
All these facts are more serious than it might seem. Now, based on these RSCIs, they begin to evaluate not only individual scientists, but also magazines, organization. Perhaps for the IPPI RAS with his 20,944 citation, the addition of 5,000 linden quotes from Tymoshenko will not play a fundamental role. But, for example, for SPP wounds with 1270 citation, an additive of more than 8,000 citation can significantly change the rating of a scientific organization.
Summing up the disappointing result, we see that the rating of every fifth of the top 20 scientists from the list of automation and computer technology is significantly overstated. So, the Rins continues to distort the scientific scientists and does not try to systematically correct them. It is impossible to use these data to evaluate scientists, magazines and organizations.
The shortcomings of the RCCI was spoke earlier [5 , 6] , but Rins now there.
Of course, the problem of namesakes is not easy if you solve it without the help of the authors. But why does NEB still do not establish feedback with the authors and operational data correction? I have repeatedly used this opportunity in Web of Science: a polite automatic response instantly comes to the letter, and after a few days - a message that the correction is made and will appear in the database after a few weeks. If the RSCI cannot solve the problem systematically, the help of the authors must be used. Regular feedback will remove the severity of the situation.
There is another aspect, clearly described in one of the comments on the article [2] . I quote the website of the TRV, preserving the author's style.
“I will now write to you a scheme according to which Rins earns money. Everything is simple. Suppose you are the leadership of the university. The university publishes little articles, and even then more in local level collections. What to do? There are indicators of the Ministry of Education, the university does not fulfill them. You can begin to form a strong school, purchase databases, Elsivir, pay for advanced training courses, and hold strong conferences. Why? You can just pay Rins (not a lot, maybe 300-400 thousand per year per university) and enter the entire waste paper that the university produces. Tables, collections of the department, textbooks, textbooks, anything. And now, lo and the number of publications increases dramatically, as quoting increases. All over the world, scientific citation implies precisely quoting on scientific articles. And we have this citation in all requirements - general. Those. The university can raise the Hirsch index 3 times easily in a year. ”
And one more quote from the same comment:
“Scientific citation is articles. And our Rins is ready to turn his system into a trash and enter everything there, if only they would pay. Skopus is thrown out every year every year, and our Rins, like a garbage collection, clings everything. They cannot match the goal - making a profit and quality of the assessment. If the RSCT takes money for raising the university rating, entering the manuals, what do you think, what indicators of the Ministry of Education he will lobby? ”
The problem raised by Elena concerns not only universities, but also scientific organizations. To ensure access to fixing data in the RSCI, the organization must buy a license. When the authorities began to pay for the number of articles and quotes for the number of articles and quotations - from the heads of the departments to the heads of organizations, all permissible and unacceptable funds began to be used. The slogan "Rating at any cost!" Already led to a decrease in the quality of articles, magazines, dissertations. The reason for reducing quality in all cases is the same: material interest.
Ultimately, this leads to a decrease in the level of science of the country, and the NEB administration contributes to this. Since it is hardly possible to expel merchants from the temple of science, it is necessary to minimize the harm they do. There is no one to monitor the maintenance of the quality of scientific results and publications except the scientists themselves. And most importantly, our weapons, as in the fight against bureaucracy, are publicity. It is necessary to report publicly, calling names, not only about the observed cases of distortion of data in the RSCI, but also about other facts of distortion, crook, and unethical behavior. If everyone will do this within the framework of their own competence, perhaps all together we will be able to change the world for the better.
1. Gantemirov R. Rins: from primitive fraud to molestation of minors // TRV-hobby. No. 163 of September 23, 2014.
2. Eremenko G. Rins in everything? // TRV-hobby. No. 163 of September 23, 2014.
3. The site "Famous Scientists"-Famous Scientists: http://www.famous-scientists/list/12925
4. Combined Results of Searches for the Standard Model Higgs Boson in Pollisions at S = 7 TEV. // Physics letters. Section B: Nuclear, Elementary Particle and High-Energy 2012. T. 710. No. 2. P. 256–277.
5. "Search in the Rins yourself!" Interview by M. Gelfand with the general director of NEB Gennady Eremenko and and Deputy Director of INION RAS Viktor Glukhov // TRV-NAUKA. No. 58 of July 20, 2010.
6. Kalenov N. Once again about the RINC // Trv-hunger. No. 71 of February 1, 2011.