[kzz102]

Speaking as a researcher, I think the whole citation business was invented by and consumed by administrators. Researchers don't need citation numbers to discover new works and evaluate people. They are perfectly fine asking their circle of friends, using journal quality and author fame as a crude proxy, and (most importantly) just read the damn papers and reach their own conclusions.

Administrators needed some objective metric that allow them to make decisions themselves without relying on the personal opinions of researchers, whom they don't trust. This is magnified by rankings that like these metrics for the same reason, publishers trying to promote journals, and database access sellers.

Unfortunately, this has now circled back to the researchers, because the administrators are making hiring / promoting decisions based on these metrics, and people started to game the system. However, I think in many circles, there is a healthy culture of rejecting this nonsense.