John Tipton
Jonathan M. Weiner, “Radical Historians and the Crisis in American History, 1959-1980,” Journal of American History 76 (1989).
What is the total number of citations?
1.
What can you learn about the number of citations to this article per year since it was published?
This article may have been perceived to be more relevant in 2019, as that was the only year in which it was cited.
What can you learn about who cites this article? What are their disciplinary identifications?
This article was cited by James Barret for the article “Making and Unmaking the Working Class: E.P. Thompson and the ‘New Labor History’ in the United States”, Historical Reflections-Reflexions Historiques, vol 41, issue 1.
James Barret, before his retirement, was a prominent labor historian at the University of Illinois, and his article was dealing primarily with the legacy of E.P. Thompson’s The Making of the English Working Class. He likely cited Weiner as Weiner’s article extensively dealt with the rise of the New Left and History from Below, in which E.P. Thompson played a prominent role.
What is the total number of publications?
1.
What is the H-index?
The H index is 2.
What are the average citations per item?
1.
Which of these numbers would you prefer to have used in evaluations for hiring and tenure? Why?
I would rather have the H-index number taken into account for hiring and tenure, as It would indicate that my work had a wider reach and was a greater significance to my field.
Is this kind of analysis appropriate for all academic fields? Why or why not?
I do not believe that this kind of analysis is appropriate for all academic fields. It his heavily geared toward the sciences, to the point that when I attempted to refine my search, the only search term applicable to history was “interdisciplinary humanities.” Furthermore, the authors full name is “Jonathan M. Weiner.” After performing the basic search, in which five articles were furnished, only one was written by this author. All other articles were written by either “Jesse Weiner” or “JF Weiner.” Furthermore, upon searching a more recent article, Web of Science indicated that it had been cited 80 times. Therefore, the accuracy of Web of Science’s citation index and analysis may be limited by the age of the article. If this is the case, the significant articles that had been instrumental in the development of a field, but not applied within the recent past, may be inaccurately represented.
Given the limitations of Web of Science’s citation analysis when applied to the humanities, as well as the imprecisions and constraints of its citation search and analysis, I would be reluctant to employ it when evaluating the significance of a body of work within my field. Furthermore, as far as I was able to tell, citation analysis does not indicate to what degree such works are being employed to support someone’s argument. It is entirely possible that an author’s work is being rebutted while being appropriately cited, and depending solely on citation analysis would give a skewed perspective concerning the current significance of an individual’s argument or methodology within their respective field.