Hi Folks,
Maybe the productive writings of Ann Arbor are more familiar to our North American members.
A comment in this week's Nature notes that Professor Arbor has an h-index of 1 from the Web of Science database provided by Thomson Scientific's ISI Web of Knowledge. This is based on her five citations for the year 2007: two articles, two letters and one abstract. (Nature 453, 719 (5 June 2008) | doi:10.1038/453719c)
In her other life Ann Arbor is a city in Michigan, and significantly a university town.
A previous note observed that:
"The career of the non-existent author Ann Arbor is well-known to connoisseurs of computerized databases and citation indexes. Usually listed as the last author, she is sometimes credited with the academic degree "MI". Ann is not actually a person, but the city of Ann Arbor, Michigan, home of the University of Michigan. Her 'degree' is a misinterpretation of the abbreviation for Michigan: MI. She pre-dates online computerized databases, and was often listed in the paper edition of Index Medicus.
"Ms Arbor now has a UK rival in the team of Walton Hall and Milton Keynes. Like her, they are usually listed as last authors. The online database Google Scholar lists them as co-authors of 46 publications, in addition to their solo work (see http://tinyurl.com/386wuo). Walton Hall is actually a building on the campus of the Open University in Milton Keynes. These 'authors' have a useful role to play: they can be used to check the accuracy of the databases and indexes.
(from: http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/452282b Nature 452, 282 (2008) | doi:10.1038/452282b.)
In an age when 'information' is increasingly harvested for us by brute-force computer bots, as well as still data-entered by the uncomprehending, it pays to check back with the original - also now easier because of digitisation - to avoid adding to the bubbling stew of misinformation out there.
Geoff
--
Geoff Read <g.read from niwa.co.nz>
http://www.annelida.net/http://www.niwascience.co.nz/ncabb/
