Comparing People with Bibliometrics

Bibliometric indicators, citation counts and/or download counts are increasingly being used to inform personnel decisions such as hiring or promotions. These statistics are very often misused. Here we provide a guide to the factors which should be considered when using these so-called quantitative measures to evaluate people. Rules of thumb are given for when begin to use bibliometric measures when comparing otherwise similar candidates.Comment: to appear in Proceedings of Library and Information Science in Astronomy VIII (LISA-8