Critical views on citation analysis in evaluations do not start with DORA or the Leiden Declaration but go back to the inception of the science citation analysis (SCI) by Eugene Garfield. Paul Wouters dissertation recounts the criticism of Harriet Zuckerman, Stephen Cole and Robert Merton in the late sixties and early seventies. In the NetherIand, citation analysis first was applied in the medical field, in 1982.
A RAWB report ranked medical departments on the basis of citation frequencies and mentions of investigators by foreign experts. The study raised many criticism in the medical field, not in the least for the looming financial consequences in the development of new government policies. One of the issues was -and still is- the explanation of the differences among departments. Current citation studies often focus on field characteristics. But in this paper in Research Policy I analyze how leadership, motivation of staff and division of labor (such as driven by available technology) is crucial in getting research done. With network analyses and coauthor mapping way back in 1990.
