Self-citations and the case of Milena Penkowa

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)

Where are the good geology internet-sites for children?

I recently visited a couple of year-3 school classes to tell them about geology. It was nice to experience their interest and eager to learn - Geology is such an easy subject to teach kids because it is all around, and the applications of geology is so easy for children to understand. Besides, children love stones. At the same time geology is a fantastic entrance to other natural sciences, talking about gravity, evolution, magnetism, other planets, etc.

Then, why are there so few good geological internet-sites for kids? At least, I had a very hard time finding sites I thought were interesting. A lot of money is spent on geological teaching materials and museums making excellent geology expositions - Why are some of these efforts not guided towards the internet?

I spent a long time searching, and the best geology site for children I found was the one developed under the OneGeology project: http://www.onegeology.org/extra/kids/home.html
It is hard to understand that there are not some internet-sites with more interactivity. Or am I missing something?

Web GIS applications at GEUS

We have several Web-GIS projects starting at GEUS, that aims to put geological maps and georeferenced data on the internet. Yesterday, I presented some of the already implemented Web GIS applications. The presentation was for the weekly GEUS seminars:

WebGISRiiisager