Bibliometrics in the context of research evaluation and research policy

Abstract

Research stakeholders including policymakers and evaluators have a demonstrated need to identify research productivity, quality, impact, networks, trends, and other aspects of researcher activity across the full range of academic disciplines and at various level of organisational aggregation. Bibliometrics is the large-scale, quantitative analysis of data about scientific publications and is a relative quick, cheap, and easy method of producing high-level answers to many questions. The main objective of this PhD dissertation is to explore the extent to which bibliometrics can be a useful tool for research policymakers and to those conducting research evaluation. These chapters also seek to find the limitations to bibliometric methods and where they can even prove harmful through their effects on the scientific community. This dissertation suggests that optimal research evaluation should incorporate a healthy balance of peer review and bibliometric analysis.