Citation Analysis and the Anti-Vivisection Controversy. Part II. An Assessment of Lester R. Aronson's Citation Record

s of reports given at scicntmc meetmgs wnue tne wom was m progress, and even a goodly number of these have been cited.” 10 According to our own examination of the SCI, 11 of Aronson’s 21 articles were never cited by anyone else. Six of these were never cited at all, and 5 were “self-cited” by Aronson or his colleague Madeline Cooper, but were cited by no one else. However, the eight papers selected by Aronson as representing his major cat research together received 85 citations over the 15-year period from 1961 to 1975 (excluding self-citations); an average of 1.37 citations in each year that they could have been cited. To put this in perspective, consider that about one quarter of all articles covered by the Science Citution Index are never cited at all. 11 And the average number of citations to each item in a five-year cumulative SCI is 2.76. This is an average of 0.55 citations per year. 12 So the major papers dealing with Aronson’s cat research not only have avoided “uncitedncss, ” they are being cited at a rate that is significantly higher than average for all types of papers that do bccomc cited in all fields of science. For the years 1961-1975, Aronson’s eight major cat papers together averaged about 10 citations yeorly. When all his work, including that on species other than the cat, is considered, Aronson’s average yearly citation rate rises to about 12 for the years 1961 to 1976. For each cited author in the SCL the average yearly citation rate is 7.48.4 Looked at from this perspective, Aronson’s citation record as an individual author is slightly better than average. But one cannot fail to observe that 36 of the citations Aronson received were to the paper he coauthored with Rosenblatt in 1958 on