The role of bibliometrics, such as impact factors and h-indices, in shaping research has been well documented. However, what function do these measures have beyond the institutional contexts in which, for better or worse, they were designed? Commenting…
Category: bibliometrics
Aspirational metrics – A guide for working towards citational justice
Is it possible to have a just politics of citation? Reflecting on their work to create a guide to fairer citation practices in academic writing, Aurélie Carlier, Hang Nguyen, Lidwien Hollanders, Nicole Basaraba, Sally Wyatt and Sharon Anyango*, highlig…
Female researchers are more read and less cited because they more often engage in research for societal progress
The gender gap in citations between male and female researchers is well documented. However, the reasons for this gap are less certain and widely contested. Discussing findings from a mixed methods analysis of research publications from Norway, Lin Zha…
Publication or Innovation? Goal displacement and lessons from the publish-or-perish culture
Drawing on a survey of academic economists in the Netherlands, Harry van Dalen¸ explores how publish or perish culture is perceived and enacted within academia. Arguing that the current arrangement of the academy along lines that promote outputs (publi…
Review papers and the creative destruction of the research literature
Review papers play a significant role in curating the scholarly record. Drawing on a study of close to six million research articles, Peter McMahan, shows how review papers not only focus and shift attention onto particular papers, but also serve to sh…
CRediT Check – Should we welcome tools to differentiate the contributions made to academic papers?
Elsevier is the latest in a lengthening list of publishers to announce their adoption for 1,200 journals of the CASRAI Contributor Role Taxonomy (CRediT). Authors of papers in these journals will be required to define their contributions in relation to a predefined taxonomy of 14 roles. In this post, Elizabeth Gadd weighs the pros and … Continued
2019 In Review: Metrics and research assessment
As governments increasingly look to national research systems as important inputs into the ‘knowledge economy’, developing ways to assess and understand their performance has become focus for policy and critique. This post brings together some of the top posts on research metrics and assessment that appeared on the LSE Impact Blog in 2019. Working to the rule – How bibliometric […]
Working to the rule – How bibliometric targets distorted Italian research
As Goodhart’s law states: ‘when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure’. Using bibliometrics to measure and assess researchers has become increasingly common, but does implementing these policies therefore devalue the metrics they are based on? In this post Alberto Baccini, Giuseppe De Nicolao and Eugenio Petrovich, present evidence from a study of Italian researchers […]
Are altmetrics able to measure societal impact in a similar way to peer review?
Altmetrics have become an increasingly ubiquitous part of scholarly communication, although the value they indicate is contested. In this post, Lutz Bornmann and Robin Haunschild present evidence from their recent study examining the relationship of peer review, altmetrics, and bibliometric analyses with societal and academic impact. Drawing on evidence from REF2014 submissions, they argue altmetrics may provide evidence for wider […]
Never on a Sunday! Is there a best day for submitting an article for publication?
With the advent of electronic publishing has come a wealth of ancillary data on issues related to the acceptance of articles for publication. Large data sets can now be quickly analysed to assess whether or not certain features, previously deemed unimportant, can actually affect the chances of a research paper being accepted for publication. In this post, James Hartley looks […]