The relentless assessment, quantification and ranking continues. As if counting citations on scientific papers wasn't enough, IT researchers have now turned the torch of scrutiny on the dark corner of acknowledgments.
"Whereas citations are formal expressions of debt, acknowledgments are arguably more personal, singular or private expressions of appreciation," say C Lee Giles and Isaac Councill of Pennsylvania State University. "Despite their promise as an analytical tool, acknowledgments have remained a largely untapped resource."
No longer. Giles and Councill devised a computer program to pick out the names of individuals, organisations and institutions mentioned in the acknowledgments of 335,000 computer science papers. The rankings appear this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
US funders the National Science Foundation earned the most acknowledgments with 12,287 thank-yous. IBM, with 1,380, was the most popular company. Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh topped the educational institutions with 640. Olivier Danvy, an IT researcher at the University of Aarhus in Denmark was mentioned 268 times, more than any other scientist. Giles and Councill say: "We thank Steve Lawrence, David Mudgett and Frank Ritter for useful discussions."
