The reliability of total citation rankings.

In short, citation analysis has become a small cottage industry today. The legitimacy of its use for a variety of purposes has been established. In fact, that legitimacy has extended to the point where many suspect uses of citations are accepted without significant skepticism. Rarely, if ever, are these counts, which compare one individual with another, accompanied by a set of caveats, about the limits of such individual comparisons or the bases on which the comparisons are being made (Jonathan R. Cole). (Cole, J. R. A Short History of the Use of Citations as a Measure of the Impact of Scientific and Scholarly Work, Chapter 14. In The Web of Knowledge; Cronin, B., Atkins, H. B., Eds.; ASIS Monograph Series, 2000; p 281.)