An Introduction to Bibliometrics

New Development and Trends

Rafael Ball

• Publisher: Chandos Publishing
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9780081021507
• eBook ISBN: 9780081021514
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

An Introduction to Bibliometrics: New Development and Trends provides a comprehensible, readable and easy to read introduction to bibliometrics. Importantly, the book surveys the latest developments of bibliometrics (such as altmetrics, etc.) and how the field is likely to change over the next decade. In the literature, bibliometrics is generally discussed from one of two perspectives: (1) Purely mathematical/statistical or (2) Its sociological implications. Both approaches are very far from how most users want to apply bibliometrics. This book fills that need by providing tactics on how bibliometrics can be applied to their sphere of scientific activity.- Provides readers with an understanding of bibliometric indicators, including their background and significance, classification in quantitative performance, and an evaluation of science and research- Includes an overview of the most important indicators, their areas of application, and where and when they should and should not be used- Discusses future trends in the quantitative performance evaluation of scientific research

Chapter 1

Preface

Abstract

Bibliometrics emerged to support librarians in their daily work, and this was the concept behind the first bibliometric analysis. However, as a method to evaluate the scientific achievements of people and institutions, bibliometrics became a child of mass-produced science, which emerged after the Second World War. Now, bibliometrics’ core theme is the quantification of scientific output, gauging the performance of institutions and people, with all the uncertainties involved in evaluating such things. Today the availability of free Internet, and the development of scientific communication and social networks simultaneously necessitate rethinking the measurement and determination of scientific output. Additionally, knowledge and evaluation of the respective publication cultures is required.

Keywords

History of scientometrics; Publication cultures; Introduction to bibliometrics Preface

In 2016, bibliometrics turned one hundred years old. It is not a new invention by the media company, Thomson Reuters (now Onex and Baring Asia), which generates a vast turnover with its various databases, such as the Science Citation Index, and makes a fortune. Nor was it invented by the media group Elsevier, the Science Citation Index's only serious competitor, which inundates universities with a whole series of science evaluation products today.

Instead, bibliometrics emerged from the idea of supporting librarians in their daily work, selecting literature, and optimising holdings management. This was the underlying concept behind the first bibliometric analyses and also the approach adopted by the American chemist, Eugene Garfield, who began to evaluate papers systematically in the 1950s based on the literature used and cited.

In the first half of the twentieth century, questions regarding the type and frequency of scientific publications, and how science works and publications come about were therefore not exactly important issues and even less the subject of quantitative study methods for scientific output, like bibliometrics today.

In any case, the output from scientists during this period was completely immaterial. Good professors had many students, received a sizeable amount of so-called student funding and, at least in Germany, lived off incomes that were among the highest in society [1]. In the early twentieth century, the director of a major bank earned around a third less than a university professor.

At this time, and against the aforementioned backdrop, the written research output in the form of books and papers or talks was not really relevant. Only those who had something to say were heard: They wrote books, gave talks and published scientific papers in journals, which were slowly beginning to catch on.

Those who didn't, however, did not have a problem and, above all, did not have to fear any repercussions. In those days, target agreements on a minimum number of scientific publications per year, as has long been commonplace at many medical and scientific institutes, were unimaginable.

As a method to evaluate the scientific achievements of people and institutions, bibliometrics therefore also became a child of mass-produced science, which emerged after the Second World War. As the number of scientists, the fragmentation of the disciplines and therefore also the demand for specialised publication organs, journals, book series and conferences skyrocketed, the number of publishing houses and especially publications also increased. And so, it was merely a question of time before there was a need to record and evaluate the written output of scientists and their institutions.

First of all, bibliometrics measures the number of papers published by an individual, for instance. This is the easy part as it does not yet require any suppositions and still yields direct information, such as that a scientist has published 200 papers and five books in his or her career. Attempting to gauge the quality and significance of the articles and books, however, is a much trickier business. Here, bibliometrics opted for a simple route that is still applied in practice to this day: A publication is all the more important the more it is perceived. To quantify this perception, bibliometrists chose citation as the indicator: A publication that is cited frequently in other publications is an important publication, a publication that is cited rarely or not at all less so.

Once a paper is published, other scientists cite it and the entire process is measured and written down. The almost endless variation of the indicators currently discussed in bibliometric literature, which has become so extensive that it is virtually impossible to overlook, does not alter the fact that the original principle has remained the same to this day. The fundamental assumption of bibliometrics essentially means that an article is all the more important the more frequently it is cited.

Anyone who fails to follow this basic assumption cannot use bibliometrics; Anyone who justifiably rejects this basic assumption will not be able to generate any insights from bibliometrics.

Moreover, comprehensive databases (which used to be published as printed directories) that record the respective citations are needed so they can be evaluated. As mentioned earlier, Eugene Garfield started the systematic evaluation of papers back in the 1950s and this has blossomed into a vast collection of data, upon which the majority of bibliometric analyses are based.

For half a century, classic bibliometrics has been based on the Science Citation Index database and its extensions and features. Nevertheless, the underlying measuring principle and above all the assumptions and conclusions from the data collected have remained the same to this day. And in principle, the Scopus database by Elsevier, effectively the Science Citation Index's only commercial competitor, does not do anything different, either.

As far as the contents and logic are concerned, these systems are also based on Garfield's mentality, the clever founder of the Web of Science and the Science Citation Index.

Although the age of bibliometrics based on this underlying theory of a simple correlation between publications and citations is far from over, new methods are emerging that are bound to supersede their predecessors one day: Usage metrics, for instance, uses a fundamentally different approach to classic citation bibliometrics and is no longer based on the fundamental theory that has been valid for almost a century, namely that a much-cited paper is a more important publication than one not cited as frequently.

Admittedly, usage metrics does not inherently solve the problem of evaluating the significance of a scientific paper as nobody can determine how important a paper is, how often it is read and how much insight the reader actually gains from it using indirect methods. However, usage metrics does enable a clear approach to this fundamental issue, which ultimately lies at the heart of bibliometrics.

For the first time, usage metrics allows a relationship between usage and significance to be established as opposed to merely determining the importance of scientific publications by exclusively conveying the citation rate indirectly.

However, this correlation can still be optimised further. Usage metrics opens up the possibility of recording publication downloads. Other applications might register and statistically evaluate the user's processing time, the time spent on the document and the manner in which it is processed via highlighting or copying. The forwarding of a document or its sharing with others on social media may also provide information on a scientific paper's importance.

Libmetrics (library metrics), on the other hand, establishes a connection between the importance of a scientific paper or book and its availability or usage in a library, such as by measuring how often it is procured or borrowed from the library. The depth of the penetrability of library holdings with a book, for instance, may contain information on how relevant the work in question is deemed. The edition of the book or the turnover generated by the book trade allows inferences to be made regarding a work's appeal. However, libmetrics is still very much in its infancy. The publication of scientific papers in electronic form, whether it be as journal articles, eBooks, blogs, chats, website articles or multimedia articles in an indeterminate media format, has become an established form of scientific communication and the dissemination of results.

Apart from new possibilities, the free internet, the development of scientific communication and social networks simultaneously opens up other needs to rethink the measurement and determination of scientific output.

Besides the aforementioned altmetrics options, the use and combination of all free network data and the application of big data technologies to the system of publications and their measurement will yield new insights.

As the internet renders this kind of information accessible all over the world and the technology has become second nature to us, the digital public can report on things, people, experiences and events in real time [2].

Although classic bibliometrics and its indicators have not yet had their day, the information they provide is increasingly being reduced to what they mean: an only very indirect theory that a frequently cited publication is an important one.

Half of all scientific papers from the European Union (EU) are already freely available on the web today [3]. With the development of freely available scientific web contents on this side of the paywall, new possibilities have long since emerged to adjudge the significance of scientific output more effectively, directly and accurately.

While the amount of scientific output is ballooning, science and research has long ceased to take place in the unobserved cocoon of the scientific ivory tower, but rather on the social battlefield in the war for money, honour and recognition. Whether science and its researchers wants to accept it or not, they are competing with swimming pools, motorways, the new European combat helicopter and spiralling welfare costs in the struggle for state resources.

Society is growing tired of forking out money for science to keep beavering away with no strings attached. Quite rightly, it also demands accountability from those who conduct research with taxpayers' money, the point of which is not immediately clear. And, in my opinion, quite rightly, it expects scientists to be measured according to standards that are internationally recognised and comparable – not by the impenetrable self-affirmation of the ‘inner circle’, a sworn community that keeps congratulating itself on how great and outstanding its results are and how fundamental its research is for the future of the human race. The taxpayer, quite rightly, would like to know which standards should be applied to facilitate a fair and honest measure of the achievements of science and research, not to mention scientists who are funded by society while representing the excellence of the people or institutions involved or not.

The quantification of scientific output is the core theme of bibliometrics, gauging the performance of institutions and people with all the uncertainties involved in weighing things up.

Many disciplines, such as medicine, large parts of the natural sciences and parts of the economic science, have long had an established system for evaluating scientific output. Although the indicators are widely accepted, there is still plenty of room for improvement in these subjects, too. New metrics become possible thanks to technological progress on the one hand (webometrics) and changes in publication habits on the other.

Nonetheless, not every discipline is willing to show its hand. The humanities, parts of the social and economic sciences, and law still doggedly insist on qualitative criteria for the evaluation of scientific achievements, partly from fear of being disturbed in the subjective protective atmosphere of scientific freedom, partly out of ignorance of the methods of bibliometrics and partly from fear of using quantitative metrics, towards which people also have an ambivalent attitude outside science.

However, we have to remain fair: The publication culture in the humanities and social sciences differs greatly from that in medicine and the natural sciences, and in actual fact it is not always easy to quantify their scientific output. Moreover, bibliometrics wantonly neglected this topic for far too long. It was much easier to tot up the citation figures for a biological paper over the years than find a fitting acknowledgement of the research achievements of an editorial scientist in German studies.

Bibliometric issues that range from medicine and the natural sciences all the way to the humanities and social sciences are complex and extensive.

Knowledge and the evaluation of the respective publication cultures is required. Only thus can obstacles and reservations be broken down and suitable methods developed.

References

[1] FAZ, p. N4, Mittwoch, 09.04.2014, NR. 84 – Forschung und Lehre.

[2] Bunz M. Die stille Revolution: wie Algorithmen Wissen, Arbeit, Öffentlichkeit und Politik verändern, ohne dabei viel Lärm zu machen. Berlin: Suhrkamp; 2012 p. 145.

[3] Archambault E., et al. In: Science-Metrix, eds. Proportion of Open Access Peer-Reviewed Papers at the European and World Levels—2004–2011. 2013. Retrievable online at http://www.science-metrix.com/pdf/SM_EC_OA_Availability_2004-2011.pdf.

Chapter 2

Introduction and History

Abstract

Scientific publications have only been mentioned since the beginning of the 20th century. With the emergence and development of the research of scientific communication, the quantification of science also began, first as a ‘science of science’ and then developed further as a result of the explosion of the amount of scientific output, which has been almost exponential sin...

Table of contents

• Cover image
• Title page
• Table of Contents
• Copyright
• Chapter 1: Preface
• Chapter 2: Introduction and History
• Chapter 3: Bibliometric Methods: Basic Principles and Indicators
• Chapter 4: Bibliometrics in the Humanities and Social Sciences: Special Forms and Methods
• Chapter 5: The Data Basis
• Chapter 6: Summary and Outlook
• Glossary