Scientists are obviously concerned with the impact of their research.  So are university administrators and funding agencies.  In this paper, I want to focus on appeals to publication and citation data as means to measuring impact.  My aim is to trace some developments in research assessment.  I begin with a short history of the practice of counting (i) scientific articles and (ii) citations to scientific articles.  I argue that the development of the widely used metrics of scientific impact and output was a consequence of exploiting possibilities in new technologies designed for other purposes.  I end by considering some of the criticisms of these popular measures and the extent to which they are legitimate concerns.  I also argue that scientoemtricians, the researchers who routinely work with publication and citation data, are quite cautious in how they employ such measures.

Coffee, tea, cake and fruit will be served before the colloquium @ 2 pm.