Function And Significance Of Science Evaluation In Science Citation Analysis

Since 20 century, with the rapid development of modern science and technology, it is well accepted that to master the whole foreground of every discipline is very important. More and more researchers realize the importance of disclosing the structure, property, character and developing rules in science.The cite and cited relation among scientific literatures expresses that researchers notice, follow, use the former theories, results and views, therefore the cite and cited relation constitute a knowledge transfer system existed inside of science community, which play an important evaluation function in scientific and technological exploration. Based on this evaluation function, citation analysis may break boundary among different disciplines, disclose the scientific character and law from multidimension scales, thus provide valuable method to understand and master essence of science. Now it is well accepted that citation analysis has become an efficiency way to research philosophy in science and technology, and now is used widely in studying scientific history, scientific forecast, scientific structure and performance evaluation.It has lasted half century since western countries develop academic and applicable research about citation analysis method, a great deal of conclusions achieved progress not only in theory, but also in application. In China, compared to western countries, the research has not formed certain scale, not achieved desired research result, moreover still existed several misunderstanding to it. In addition, much investigation has not been put into practice, especially in support to decision making. Therefore, it is necessary to study the principle of citation analysis based on its evaluation function and master the essence of method.There are three applied fields of citation analysis that the paper involved: scientific history, scientific forecast, scientific structure and performance evaluation. By analysis of several cases and open out principle,the paper describe and explain principle first, then compare research differences between China and western countries:Differences among study object. It is almost half century that western countries focus on scientific history, scientific forecast, scientific structure research by citation method, while in China, the related investigation are nearly blank.Differences among citation indices, In China, researchers accustomed to use chain index such as the number of citation, at the same time, western scholars incline to net index for instance: co-citation, bibliographic coupling.Differences among citation databases.Finally, the paper discuss the limitation of citation analysis: : complexity of citing motivate;not all citations listed in references;additional, as the most important data source of citation analysis, SCI is not perfect, for instance: the majority of journals included in it is from developing country , and the language written almost in English, the statistical of co-author still disputed by researchers and so on.As a whole, citation method has some advantages in research of Philosophy in Science and Technology: first provide an knew quantity study way, second enrich and widen its research topics, third bring new thought to cross-discipline investigation in "big science" age.