  Peer review and citation metrics are two means of gauging the value of
scientific research, but the lack of publicly available peer review data makes
the comparison of these methods difficult. Mathematics can serve as a useful
laboratory for considering these questions because as an exact science, there
is a narrow range of reasons for citations. In mathematics, virtually all
published articles are post-publication reviewed by mathematicians in
Mathematical Reviews (MathSciNet) and so the data set was essentially the Web
of Science mathematics publications from 1993 to 2004. For a decade, especially
important articles were singled out in Mathematical Reviews for featured
reviews. In this study, we analyze the bibliometrics of elite articles selected
by peer review and by citation count. We conclude that the two notions of
significance described by being a featured review article and being highly
cited are distinct. This indicates that peer review and citation counts give
largely independent determinations of highly distinguished articles. We also
consider whether hiring patterns of subfields and mathematicians' interest in
subfields reflect subfields of featured review or highly cited articles. We
reexamine data from two earlier studies in light of our methods for
implications on the peer review/citation count relationship to a diversity of
disciplines.

Digital Libraries