You keep citing our paper. I don't think it means what you think it means.
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| Quote here (image: princessbride.wikia.com) |
I haven't published much. Activity in my scholar.google profile isn't so hectic and exponential that I can't dig into things a little more than your more prolific scholar.
So as I continue the line of research kicked off by our paper (Metabolic hypothesis for human altriciality), I naturally want to read the articles that cite it. Scholar.google is great for showing me those. And while I dig around, I also have the opportunity to see why these authors cited our paper.
So as I continue the line of research kicked off by our paper (Metabolic hypothesis for human altriciality), I naturally want to read the articles that cite it. Scholar.google is great for showing me those. And while I dig around, I also have the opportunity to see why these authors cited our paper.
For background, here's a short synopsis of our paper that I'm Google-stalking:
Humans are thought to be born when we're born to escape the bipedally-adapted, gestation-constraining birth canal ("obstetrical dilemma"), but it's more likely that we're born when we're born because that's all the fetal tissue our mother can grow ("EGG: energetics of gestation and growth").
That's it. There's a lot more in the paper but that's the gist. Now, how's it being cited?
Humans are thought to be born when we're born to escape the bipedally-adapted, gestation-constraining birth canal ("obstetrical dilemma"), but it's more likely that we're born when we're born because that's all the fetal tissue our mother can grow ("EGG: energetics of gestation and growth").
That's it. There's a lot more in the paper but that's the gist. Now, how's it being cited?
Let's go paper by paper. Don't worry. There are only five.
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Our paper is #69 in this one.Here's where it's cited:
"Biomechanical [68] or metabolic [69] constraints causing human altriciality may have provided another key preadaptation for the evolution of modern human cognition by allowing an increased period of postnatal modelling of the developing brain via the interaction with complex social and cultural environments [70]."Considering the results of energetic limits and metabolic constraints to be adaptive ranks pretty far up there on the Panglossian scale. Regardless, this is a perfectly good citation of our paper. Thanks to the authors for not citing us later in the sentence.
Good? Yes.
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Global Geometric Morphometric Analyses of the Human Pelvis Reveal Substantial Neutral Population History Effects, Even across Sexes
"Our analyses testing for obstetrical constraints in shape variation indicated no difference in the neutral OoA pattern between males and females, a difference that would be expected if constraints were stronger in females than in males. This result is consistent with Tague’s [51] finding that males are not necessarily more variable in pelvic morphology than females. It is also consistent with recent suggestions that the obstetric dilemma may be influenced more by maternal energetics than pelvic morphology per se [90,91]."Good? Yes.
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Many ways to die, one way to arrive: How selection acts through pregnancyOur paper is #23 in this one. (GDM = gestational diabetes mellitus.) Here's where it's cited:
"GDM and preeclampsia are common diseases, with grave consequences in pregnancy, and thus may strongly impact upon reproductive fitness. GDM affects 4–20% of pregnancies in different populations worldwide [19]. It can cause macrosomia, in which the fetus grows too large to fit through the maternal pelvis [20–23]."Here is the only part of our paper that mentions diabetes:
"uncontrolled gestational diabetes is commonly associated with postterm parturition (Langer O, Kozlowski S, Brustman L. 1991. Abnormal growth patterns in diabetes in pregnancy: A longitudinal study. Isr J Med Sci 27:516–523.)"
Notice how our paper talks about postterm parturition and neither fetal size nor fetal size relative to maternal pelvis. Maybe the paper we cite does.
Good? No.
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Bony pelvic canal size and shape in relation to body proportionality in humansHere's where it's cited:
"This “obstetric dilemma” (Washburn, 1960) has recently been questioned on biomechanical (Warrener, 2011; but see Whitcome et al., 2012) and energetic grounds (Dunsworth et al., 2012)."Good? Yes. Although it could also go under the biomechanical part of that sentence.
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Teaching the principle of biological optimizationOur paper is #4 in this one. Here's where it's cited:
"It has been hypothesized that the timing of human birth optimizes the ability of cognitive and motor neuronal development in the child by allowing the child to maximize the absorption of important cultural information (memes) in its environment [4]."Yes it has, but not by us. Here's what our paper says (by the way, we were forced to address this by reviewers):
"Finally, a fourth possibility, originally proposed by Portmann (5), is that the timing of human birth and degree of neonatal brain development optimizes cognitive and motor neuronal development (50)."Our paper points to others which should be dug up when possible and, if not, then it should be explicit that the author means to point readers to references within ours, not to ours itself.
Good? No.
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Sure it's a small sample size but people aren't as good as they should be at citing our paper. I know I've made these same mistakes and I know there's no way coauthors and reviewers can catch all of them especially in interdisciplinary works, but I just thought I'd pipe up and go through with this exercise here to remind myself and others to do our homework better.But beyond a nice little reality check, there's a larger issue...Can I really consider all these citations as meaningful indicators of my research's value? Are citations truly reflecting the impact of my work if they misrepresent it? Should I include this little expose in my portfolio come promotion and tenure time to demonstrate how I should, in reality, have a lower citation count... that I should have fewer points in this game?
Inconceivable!
Here's why I won't be revealing any of this to my evaluators: I'm being compared against others whose citation totals are also padded with misrepresentation. It's only fair that I assume the same advantages that everyone else does. Who cares about all the larger implications for Scholarship, Evidence, and Knowledge when my job is on the line? I need those points.
So I change my tune. I don't care how you cite our paper. Thank you for citing! Cite as you wish.
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Note: Earlier in 2013 I read The Princess Bride for the first time and YOU ARE MISSING OUT if you haven't.
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