From	Phil Jones	Date	Tue, 19 Aug 2003 09:48:05 +0100
To	Michael E. Mann, Tom Wigley, Tom Crowley
CC	Keith Briffa, Michael Oppenheimer, ray bradley, Malcolm K. Hughes, Jonathan T. Overpeck, Kevin Trenberth, Ben Santer, Stephen H Schneider, Caspar Ammann, Gabi Hegerl, Michael E. Mann
Subject	Re: POLL ON SOON-BALIUNAS
Tom, I once met Soon at a meeting organised by the ESA in Tenerife. I think he gave a talk - but only think, so it wasn't memorable in any way. As you say they don't come to the regular meetings like EGU/S, AGU, AMS etc. I only went to Tenerife as the organisers paid for me to go. Citation ratings vary (there are several different scales/indicators as well) a lot from year to year for most journals. I've never figured out how the counting is done wrt the highly cited lists that Tom. W., Kevin and I are on. Do only first authorships count for example? Even with a common name like mine people still get it wrong and mistakes persist. Surprisingly Jim Hansen doesn't make the above list ([1]http://www.highlycited.com), but then he normally drops his E. There are few more journals (QSR, Climate Change, IJC, AAR to give a few) where paleo papers also appear. Cheers Phil At 10:43 13/08/2003 -0400, Michael E. Mann wrote: I checked this out prior to my senate hearing. Their science citations in the climate literature are poor, as one would hope and expect. Interestingly, they both drop their second initials when publishing in the climate literature so that their names don't turn in up in ISI if you do a search on their publications in the astronomy literature (which use the full initials)--apparently, they don't want their astronomy colleagues to be aware that they're moonlighting as supposed climatologists... Their numbers are better in the astronomy literature, though Soon's numbers even here are mediocre. Baliunas had some well-cited publications more than a decade ago. This is her work on the use of sun-like stars as a model for solar variability, etc., which is well referenced in the astrophysics community. However, most of these appear to be her Ph.D. work, and appear to have been published w/ her Ph.D adviser. Not much evidence however that she has made any useful, independent contribution since then. There are some additional papers she's published on time series analysis of solar signals--looks like the kind of stuff you might expect to see from a graduate student first-year research project.... In my opinion, its would be a mistake to evaluate these on their citations numbers in astronomy. We should focus on their numbers in the climate literature, which are the only ones relevant when discussing the issue of how their work on climate is received by their fellow scientists, mike At 08:15 AM 8/13/2003 -0600, Tom Wigley wrote: Might be interesting to see how frequently Soon and Baliunas, individually, are cited (as astronomers). Are they any good in their own fields? Perhaps we could start referring to them as astrologers (excusable as ... 'oops, just a typo') Tom. ++++++++++++++++ Tom Crowley wrote: Hi there, we need some data on Soon and Baliunas. one of my concerns is that they only publish in low impact journals and completely bypass the normal give and take of presentations at open scientific meetings (for example, I think I have probably heard 100 presentations overall from the people on this mailing list). it is therefore very important to inquire for the sake or our exchanges with reporters/legislators etc as to how often any of you may have heard Soon or Baliunas give a talk in an open meeting, where they could defend their analyses. please respond to me as to whether you have heard either of them present something on their paleo-analyses (I think I heard Baliunas speak once on her solar-type star work, but that doesn't count). I will let you know the results of the poll so that we may all be on the same grounds with respect to the data and reporting such information to press inquiries/legislators etc. further fyi I list below the journal impact for six geophysical/climate/paleoclimate journals: Paleoceanography 3.821 J. Climate 3.250 J. Geophysical Res. (Climate) 2.245 Geophysical Research Letters 2.150 The Holocene 1.852 Climate Research 1.016 Science and Nature are much higher (26-30) but there citation numbers are I believe inflated with respect to our field because their citation ranking also includes many very widely cited biology publications. hope to hear from you soon, Tom ______________________________________________________________ Professor Michael E. Mann Department of Environmental Sciences, Clark Hall University of Virginia Charlottesville, VA 22903 _______________________________________________________________________ e-mail: mann@virginia.edu Phone: (434) 924-7770 FAX: (434) 982-2137 [2]http://www.evsc.virginia.edu/faculty/people/mann.shtml Prof. Phil Jones Climatic Research Unit Telephone +44 (0) 1603 592090 School of Environmental Sciences Fax +44 (0) 1603 507784 University of East Anglia Norwich Email p.jones@uea.ac.uk NR4 7TJ UK ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- References 1. http://www.highlycited.com/ 2. http://www.evsc.virginia.edu/faculty/people/mann.shtml