Can bibliometrics help in assessing societal contributions of agricultural research? Exploring societal interactions across research areas

Abstract

We explore whether and how mapping bibliometric methods combined with other data sources (mentions in news and policy) can also be useful for mapping potential societal engagement of research fields. We use as a case study agricultural research, broadly defined, since this is a field that has long being recognised as problematic for conventional bibliometric assessment, particularly in developing contexts. On the one hand, we use conventional bibliometric data such as percentage of internal coverage, non-English publications, co-word mapping and the fine-grained classification of science provided by article-level clustering. On the other hand, we explore relative frequency of mentions in policy documents and news items.The comparison of patterns across research areas suggests those areas that may be more directly engaged with societal actors.