Cricket and indeed many sports are dominated by statistics. Connoiseurs of the game are quick to cite facts and figures. In today's world, one cannot escape displays of ever-changing rankings of teams and players, based on precise, constantly updated facts. A few weeks ago, the Australian cricket captain, Steve Waugh made yet another century, crossing the legendary Don Bradman's haul, to become his country's record holder for Test hundreds. When asked how he felt while overhauling Bradman, Waugh laconically noted that he had batted considerably more times than his illustrious predecessor. Waugh's message was clear; averages may be more significant than raw numbers. Ever since computers revolutionized the methods of data storage, handling and retrieval, science too has been gripped by the infection of making quantitative comparisons. For a long time after its inception, the weapon of the Science Citation Index (SCI) found little application in India. The database was expensive, relatively unavailable and few appreciated its value. Times have changed. The Institute of Scientific Information's (ISI) Web of Science, a beguilingly named network of science databases and connections to the literature, is now more widely accessible from several major institutions in India. Amateur analysts now abound. Total counts of papers from institutions and individuals, indexed in the SCI, can be easily computed. Journal impact factors can be used to provide a seductively misleading measure of average quality. With a little more work, citations per paper can be counted, providing yet another parameter for ranking individuals, departments, institutions, organizations and even nations. There is a vicarious pleasure in being able to compare onesell apparently objectively and quantitatively, with one's colleagues; those on top clearly more comfortable with the derived rankings. In India, where the number of ISI indexed papers is relatively small and the number of citations they accure is modest, the dangers of misrepresenting and misinterpreting publication statistics is great. Despite these misgivings, the power of the ISI databases for assessing published science cannot be underestimated.
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机译：板球乃至许多运动都以统计数据为主导。游戏的鉴赏家很快就会引用事实和数据。在当今世界，基于准确，不断更新的事实，无法逃脱团队和球员排名不断变化的显示。几周前，澳大利亚板球队长史蒂夫·沃（Steve Waugh）又跨了一个世纪，穿越了传奇的唐·布拉德曼（Don Bradman），成为了他的国家Test数百人的记录保持者。当被问及在对Bradman进行检修时感觉如何时，Waugh讽刺地指出，他的击球次数比其杰出的前任要多得多。沃的信息很清楚。平均数可能比原始数字重要。自从计算机彻底改变了数据存储，处理和检索方法以来，科学就一直受到定量比较的感染。自成立以来的很长一段时间，科学引文索引（SCI）的武器在印度几乎没有应用。该数据库价格昂贵，相对不可用，很少有人欣赏它的价值。时代变了。科学信息研究所（ISI）的Web of Science（科学数据库）是一个易名为科学的网络，并与文献建立了联系，现在可从印度的几个主要机构中更广泛地访问它们。现在业余分析家比比皆是。可以很容易地计算出SCI中索引的机构和个人论文总数。日记帐影响因子可用于提供对平均质量的诱人误导性度量。只需做更多的工作，就可以计算每篇论文的引用次数，这为个人，部门，机构，组织甚至国家的排名提供了又一个参数。能够客观，定量地与同事进行比较，这是一种替代的乐趣。那些排名靠前的人显然更喜欢得出的排名。在印度，ISI索引论文的数量相对较少，而其被引用的论文的数量却很少，错误陈述和误解出版物统计数据的危险很大。尽管存在这些疑虑，但不能低估ISI数据库评估已发表科学的能力。
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