Use And Misuse Of Bibliometric Indices In Scholarly Performance Evaluation

Quantifying the relative performance of individual scholars, groups of scholars, departments, institutions, provinces/states/regions and countries has become an integral part of decision-making over research policy, funding allocations, awarding of grants, faculty hirings, and claims for promotion and tenure. Bibliometric indices (based mainly upon citation counts), such as the h-index and the journal impact factor, are heavily relied upon in such assessments. There is a growing consensus, and a deep concern, that these indices — more-and-more often used as a replacement for the informed judgement of peers — are misunderstood and are, therefore, often misinterpreted and misused. The articles in this ESEP Theme Section present a range of perspectives on these issues. Alternative approaches, tools and metrics that will hopefully lead to a more balanced role for these instruments are presented.

Browman HI, Stergiou KI  INTRODUCTION: Factors and indices are one thing, deciding who is scholarly, why they are scholarly, and the relative value of their scholarship is something else entirely
ESEP 8:1-3

Campbell P  Escape from the impact factor
ESEP 8:5-7

Lawrence PA    Lost in publication: how measurement harms science
ESEP 8:9-11

Todd PA, Ladle RJ    Hidden dangers of a ‘citation culture’
ESEP 8:13-16

Taylor M, Perakakis P, Trachana V  The siege of science
ESEP 8:17-40

Cheung WWL    The economics of post-doc publishing
ESEP 8:41-44

Tsikliras AC  Chasing after the high impact
ESEP 8:45-47

Zitt M, Bassecoulard E    Challenges for scientometric indicators: data demining, knowledge flows measurements and diversity issues
ESEP 8:49-60

Harzing AWK, van der Wal R  Google Scholar as a new source for citation analysis
ESEP 8:61-73

Pauly D, Stergiou KI  Re-interpretation of ‘influence weight’ as a citation-based Index of New Knowledge (INK)
ESEP 8:75-78

Giske J  Benefitting from bibliometry
ESEP 8:79-81

Butler L Using a balanced approach to bibliometrics: quantitative performance measures in the Australian Research Quality Framework
ESEP 8:83-92
Erratum

Bornmann L, Mutz R, Neuhaus C, Daniel HD  Citation counts for research evaluation: standards of good practice for analyzing bibliometric data and presenting and interpreting results
ESEP 8:93-102

Harnad S  Validating research performance metrics against peer rankings
ESEP 8:103-107