3,170 research outputs found
Towards a new crown indicator: Some theoretical considerations
The crown indicator is a well-known bibliometric indicator of research
performance developed by our institute. The indicator aims to normalize
citation counts for differences among fields. We critically examine the
theoretical basis of the normalization mechanism applied in the crown
indicator. We also make a comparison with an alternative normalization
mechanism. The alternative mechanism turns out to have more satisfactory
properties than the mechanism applied in the crown indicator. In particular,
the alternative mechanism has a so-called consistency property. The mechanism
applied in the crown indicator lacks this important property. As a consequence
of our findings, we are currently moving towards a new crown indicator, which
relies on the alternative normalization mechanism
Untangling the Web of E-Research: Towards a Sociology of Online Knowledge
e-Research is a rapidly growing research area, both in terms of publications
and in terms of funding. In this article we argue that it is necessary to
reconceptualize the ways in which we seek to measure and understand e-Research
by developing a sociology of knowledge based on our understanding of how
science has been transformed historically and shifted into online forms. Next,
we report data which allows the examination of e-Research through a variety of
traces in order to begin to understand how the knowledge in the realm of
e-Research has been and is being constructed. These data indicate that
e-Research has had a variable impact in different fields of research. We argue
that only an overall account of the scale and scope of e-Research within and
between different fields makes it possible to identify the organizational
coherence and diffuseness of e-Research in terms of its socio-technical
networks, and thus to identify the contributions of e-Research to various
research fronts in the online production of knowledge
On tit for tat: Franceschini and Maisano versus ANVUR regarding the Italian research assessment exercise VQR 2011-2014
The response by Benedetto, Checchi, Graziosi & Malgarini (2017) (hereafter
"BCG&M"), past and current members of the Italian Agency for Evaluation of
University and Research Systems (ANVUR), to Franceschini and Maisano's ("F&M")
article (2017), inevitably draws us into the debate. BCG&M in fact complain
"that almost all criticisms to the evaluation procedures adopted in the two
Italian research assessments VQR 2004-2010 and 2011-2014 limit themselves to
criticize the procedures without proposing anything new and more apt to the
scope". Since it is us who raised most criticisms in the literature, we welcome
this opportunity to retrace our vainly "constructive" recommendations, made
with the hope of contributing to assessments of the Italian research system
more in line with the state of the art in scientometrics. We see it as equally
interesting to confront the problem of the failure of knowledge transfer from
R&D (scholars) to engineering and production (ANVUR's practitioners) in the
Italian VQRs. We will provide a few notes to help the reader understand the
context for this failure. We hope that these, together with our more specific
comments, will also assist in communicating the reasons for the level of
scientometric competence expressed in BCG&M's heated response to F&M's
criticism
A review of the literature on citation impact indicators
Citation impact indicators nowadays play an important role in research
evaluation, and consequently these indicators have received a lot of attention
in the bibliometric and scientometric literature. This paper provides an
in-depth review of the literature on citation impact indicators. First, an
overview is given of the literature on bibliographic databases that can be used
to calculate citation impact indicators (Web of Science, Scopus, and Google
Scholar). Next, selected topics in the literature on citation impact indicators
are reviewed in detail. The first topic is the selection of publications and
citations to be included in the calculation of citation impact indicators. The
second topic is the normalization of citation impact indicators, in particular
normalization for field differences. Counting methods for dealing with
co-authored publications are the third topic, and citation impact indicators
for journals are the last topic. The paper concludes by offering some
recommendations for future research
A Review of Theory and Practice in Scientometrics
Scientometrics is the study of the quantitative aspects of the process of science as a communication system. It is centrally, but not only, concerned with the analysis of citations in the academic literature. In recent years it has come to play a major role in the measurement and evaluation of research performance. In this review we consider: the historical development of scientometrics, sources of citation data, citation metrics and the âlaws" of scientometrics, normalisation, journal impact factors and other journal metrics, visualising and mapping science, evaluation and policy, and future developments
Reviewing, indicating, and counting books for modern research evaluation systems
In this chapter, we focus on the specialists who have helped to improve the
conditions for book assessments in research evaluation exercises, with
empirically based data and insights supporting their greater integration. Our
review highlights the research carried out by four types of expert communities,
referred to as the monitors, the subject classifiers, the indexers and the
indicator constructionists. Many challenges lie ahead for scholars affiliated
with these communities, particularly the latter three. By acknowledging their
unique, yet interrelated roles, we show where the greatest potential is for
both quantitative and qualitative indicator advancements in book-inclusive
evaluation systems.Comment: Forthcoming in Glanzel, W., Moed, H.F., Schmoch U., Thelwall, M.
(2018). Springer Handbook of Science and Technology Indicators. Springer Some
corrections made in subsection 'Publisher prestige or quality
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