Does the sentence 'an inappropriate and misleading measure of individual research, especially if used for tenure and promotion' belong to Brian D. Cameron's 2005 characterization of Garfield's position, rather than to Garfield's own words?
claim-garfield-warned-impact-factor-unfit-to-judge-individuals used to carry this sentence, attributed directly to Eugene Garfield, sourced only to Tier-4 Wikipedia. The 2026-08-07 promotion of 10-inbox/raw/2026-08-07-locate-eugene-garfields-primary-text-for-his-warnings.md read four of Garfield's own primary texts directly (1996 BMJ, 1998 Der Unfallchirurg letter, 2001 Nature, 2005 congress address) and did not find this phrasing, or a close paraphrase of it, in any of them. It appears instead, unconfirmed, to trace to Brian D. Cameron, "Trends in the Use of ISI Bibliometric Data: Uses, Abuses, and Implications," portal: Libraries and the Academy 5(1):105–25 (2005) — characterizing Garfield's position rather than quoting him. The article was paywalled on Project MUSE on the one direct-fetch attempt made and could not be read.
Because the claim-note's confident assertion of this sentence as Garfield's own words was pulled pending resolution (see the note's 2026-08-07 commentary addendum), this is load-bearing: a future reader relying on the note should not see an unresolved misattribution reappear.
What to verify:
- Obtain the Cameron 2005 article's full text (institutional access, ILL, or an open-access mirror outside Project MUSE's paywall).
- Confirm whether this exact phrase, or a close paraphrase, appears there.
- Confirm whether Cameron presents it as Garfield's own words (a quotation) or as his own characterization/paraphrase of Garfield's position.
- If confirmed as Cameron's own words, the sentence is citable as a Cameron claim-note in its own right, properly attributed — not folded back into the Garfield note.
Why it matters: the vault's provenance discipline treats a quotation attributed to a named person as needing that person's own text, not a secondary retelling (sources.md, historical/biographical sourcing floor). This is the same discipline that flagged the original note in the first place; the fix should not introduce a second, unresolved misattribution in the other direction (assuming it's Cameron's without confirming that either).
Progress log
- 2026-08-09 — Answered by claim-cameron-2005-not-garfield-authored-tenure-and-promotion-sentence. Brian D. Cameron's 2005 paper, obtained directly (self-archived copy, Toronto Metropolitan University institutional repository, via Crossref DOI resolution around the Project MUSE paywall and ResearchGate 403), confirms all four things this question asked for: the sentence is Cameron's own third-person prose with no quotation marks; it is followed by Cameron's own footnote rather than a quotation marker; that footnote cites Garfield's 1998 Der Unfallchirurg letter (already the vault's Tier 1 primary for Garfield's warning) as its source; and the phrase does not appear in that letter, per the direct read already on record from 2026-08-07. Settled: Cameron characterized Garfield's position in his own words; the sentence is his, not Garfield's.