Dear Ecolog, My colleagues and I are interested in whether citations, frequently used as a proxy for merit (i.e. most highly cited work), relate to the biological significance of the study. As ecologists, we used a large set of effect sizes from eeb to test this idea. If you are interested, it is OA, online early here: http://www.springerlink.com/content/5375525681v282l2/
We found that there was no relationship between citations and effect sizes in ecology and we also found that papers rejecting hypotheses had larger effect sizes. This is really fascinating. We made some fun interpretations of this but would love to have additional feedback on how we should move forward either with citations in general or how to best use effect sizes. One idea we have been kicking around is an effect size databank online. This would provide a real opportunity for broad synthesis and be useful in contrasting efficacy of various treatments. Imagine a simple online tool that you visit when you complete a study and you enter your effect size estimates into. Of course, full datasets etc would be fantastic but this would be a neat synthetic tool. Any ideas appreciated. cheers, chris.
