Milena Penkowa represents an interesting case of a young scientist making a fantastic career in Danish science, strongly supported by some heavy players, among them the former Minister of Science and the Rector of Copenhagen University. At every possible occasion Milena Penkowa was but forward as a role model for young scientists. Now, to the embarassement of the Danish scientific establishment, it turns out that Milena Penkowa was cheating not only with her grant money but also with her scientific works.
http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110107/full/news.2011.703.html
The central question is why did Milena Penkowa make it so far? The answer is that she published a lot and was heavily cited. So on almost all bibliometric measures she was an excellent scientist. However, looking at her citations one feature is very noticeable, namely the extent to which she cited herself. Out of a total of 2,401 citations listed in the Web of Science database, 1296 are self-citations. A lot has been written on scientific self-citations, and although I read only a very small part of this literature, I would think that red lights should be flashing for scientist that cites themselves so often that more than 50% of their citations are self-citations. I wonder why the percentage of self-citations is not generally accepted as a bibliometric parameter for funding agencies and employers, not to continue to promote self-glorifying scientist obsessed with (self-)citations. Apparently Milena Penkowa was so focussed on her citations that her PC would show her citation-index whenever started up. I know a lot of scientists have the same obsession, and it seems unhealthy both for the individuals as well as science as a whole.
I checked out a few scientists within my own area of expertise and actually found the percentage of self-citations very much reflected what I thought it would. I completely agree with the definition that good guys have self-citations < 50% of total cites, and the bad guys have > 50% self-citations - See http://blogs.nature.com/u24d269fc/2008/04/25/h-factors-research-metrics-and-self-citation.
Postscriptum: The blog was picked up by University Post and Universitetsavisen (in danish)
http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110107/full/news.2011.703.html
The central question is why did Milena Penkowa make it so far? The answer is that she published a lot and was heavily cited. So on almost all bibliometric measures she was an excellent scientist. However, looking at her citations one feature is very noticeable, namely the extent to which she cited herself. Out of a total of 2,401 citations listed in the Web of Science database, 1296 are self-citations. A lot has been written on scientific self-citations, and although I read only a very small part of this literature, I would think that red lights should be flashing for scientist that cites themselves so often that more than 50% of their citations are self-citations. I wonder why the percentage of self-citations is not generally accepted as a bibliometric parameter for funding agencies and employers, not to continue to promote self-glorifying scientist obsessed with (self-)citations. Apparently Milena Penkowa was so focussed on her citations that her PC would show her citation-index whenever started up. I know a lot of scientists have the same obsession, and it seems unhealthy both for the individuals as well as science as a whole.
I checked out a few scientists within my own area of expertise and actually found the percentage of self-citations very much reflected what I thought it would. I completely agree with the definition that good guys have self-citations < 50% of total cites, and the bad guys have > 50% self-citations - See http://blogs.nature.com/u24d269fc/2008/04/25/h-factors-research-metrics-and-self-citation.
Postscriptum: The blog was picked up by University Post and Universitetsavisen (in danish)
The blog was picked up by journalist resulting in two short articles:
SvarSlethttp://universitypost.dk/article/comment-self-citations-and-case-milena-penkowa
http://universitypost.dk/node/10894