On the Value, Quality and Negative Citation of Scientific Publications

The article analyzes such concepts as value and quality as applied to scientific publications. A review of a series of works devoted to disclosing the meaning of these concepts is conducted: these works convincingly demonstrate that the value and quality terms are not equivalent, despite the correlation between them. If one is talking about conscientious, non-imitation citation, it reflects the value of a scientific publication (based on the fact of its use), but not its quality. In addition to the reviewed series of works, the presented article shows which manifestations of the value of scientific publications can be reflected in their citation (the value reflected by different links can be different in nature). The article mentions the practices of imitation citation (which reflects neither value nor quality) and possible statistical tools for their detecting, as well as for reducing their impact on scientometric indicators. The article considers such a phenomenon as negative citation of a scientific publication, which reflects the polemical, debatable value of the cited work with low assessments of its quality. It is reasonably shown that the opinion on the necessity to exclude such a component of value from all scientometric calculations, in any case, has a right to exist and is acceptable as an alternative.