1. D. E. Koditschek kod@seas.upenn.edu 358 GRW
ESE 290/291 Introduction to Electrical & Systems Engineering Research Methodology & Design Lecture 1: What to Read (Source Acquisition in a Technical Domain)
D. E. Koditschek
358 GRW

2. Overview Search the increasingly indexed “Web of Literature”
within: keywords, terminology and technical phrases
ahead & back: articles citing and articles cited
across: check “similar/related papers”
Assess Venue
ISI Web of Knowledge Journal Citation Reports
Journal: mission statement & editorial board
Conference: multiple annual meetings; program committee; present relative citation rate
Assess Author(s)
Location/profession and interest in topic
Publication rate and citation rate relative to publication venue

3. Scientometrics and Bibliometry
Science
human knowledge about the empirical world and theories that represent it
corpus of systematically indexed, broadly, stably available peer-reviewed publications
Scientometrics
D. J. de S. Price
Science 149(3683):510–515 (1965)
“…an attempt to describe in the broadest outline the nature of the total world network of scientific papers.”
Springer Journal: “quantitative features and characteristics of science and scientific research”
Bibliometry
Impact of venue
Garfield E. “The history and meaning of the journal impact factor,” JAMA 295: 90–93 (2006)
“…the numerator, which is the number of citations in the current year to items published in the previous 2 years, and the denominator, which is the number of substantive articles and reviews published in the same 2 years.”
Impact of author
J. E. Hirsch, “An Index to Quantify an Individual’s Scientific Research Output,” Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 102(46):16569–16572 (2005).
“I propose the index h, defined as the number of papers with citation number ≥h, as a useful index to characterize the scientific output of a researcher.”
Caveat Emptor
Van Noorden, R. Nature (2014). doi: /nature
“Publishers withdraw more than 120 gibberish papers,”
“Ike Antkare’s h-index … 94 — at the time [2010], making Antkare the world's 21st most highly cited scientist.”

4. The “Big Three” Scientific Indices
Value of Institutional Membership at Penn et al.
faculty and student quality; facilities; brand name
access to human knowledge: indices as well as content
Meho, L. I. & Yang, K. J. Am. Soc. Inf. Sci. 58:2105–2125 (2007)
Impact on citation counts and rankings of LIS faculty
as a function of data sources:
ISI
Scopus
Google scholar
Kod’s biased view
Use citation count as initial surrogate of quality/importance – then go see experts
GS: great for quick/sloppy initial search
Scopus: best for careful crawl over broad WoS
forward & back in time (prior highly cited; most recent highly cited)
sideways across discipline (find the overlapping literatures)
ISI: too narrow for engineering disciplines; best used for journal impact

5. This Week’s Assignment
Source Acquisition Problem Statement
Find two high quality sources
from the relevant scientific literature
summarizing the state of the art in your general technical area
thereby exposing technology or capability gap
Use their insight to find two different motivating sources
they‘ve (almost surely) motivated the importance of the gap
you‘re to verify by finding cited (or citing) motivating publications
Suggested Problem Approach
Start with your sponsor’s suggested papers (or simply Google/Wiki/GS)
Go to GS and find some other likely high quality publications
Look up those papers in Scopus to find your review articles
use their cited and citing publications (and recursively so as needed)
to look for the most recent highly cited review-style publications
Use review articles to find high impact corroborating motivation
Your job: provide evidence that your authors, papers, and venues are high quality
impact factor of venue; publication citation count; author h-index
show intellectual resilience in the face of inevitable obstacles
The publication is very new so there are very few citing pubs – but the venue and author(s) are clearly great
The publication is very new and so are the authors – but the venue is great and the institutions are reassuring
There are too few publications in this area (give evidence by reporting some details of how you searched)