TURNING CITATIONS INTO CURRENCY FOR SCIENCE: A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE
The narrative begins in the aftermath of World War II when increased funding for research, championed by Vannevar Bush, positions basic research as a catalyst for technological progress. The resulting surge in scientific publishing creates opportunities for information scientists and publishers. In the 1950s, Robert Maxwell and Eugene Garfield shape the blueprint for the research economy. Maxwell establishes Pergamon Press, an international publisher, while Garfield invents the science citation index to manage the growing knowledge flow.
Fast forward sixty years, and the global science system evolves into a citation economy, with academic credibility tied to the dominant commercial citation indexes – Elsevier's Scopus and Clarivate's Web of Science. The digitization, computing power, and financial investment further amplify the reach of these indexes. Journal rankings, impact factors, and h-indexes become key metrics for scholarly reputation, leading to the exclusion of non-Anglophone journals, reinforcing academic credibility disparities.
The consequences include the marginalization of researchers in the majority world, forcing them into a research productivism model to keep up with the rapidly evolving landscape. The response to concerns about scientific fraud leads to an integrity-technology arms race, with publishers and indexes turning to AI tools to combat perceived academic gaming and manipulation.
The proliferation of publishing outputs, concerns over research integrity, and global divides raise questions about the state of the science system. As the author-pays publishing model gains dominance, the Open Science vision faces challenges. With citations becoming the primary currency in the scientific commons, the future of science communication remains uncertain.
