arXiv:1006.1714v1 [astro-ph.IM] 9 Jun 2010 **Author** Number** **Volume Vol. Series, Conference ASP Title** **Volume a ht4%o hs aeswr ulse in published were papers these of bigge 43% 1995 four that for was analyzed the were Mets¨ahovi Observatory) of the and papers sity Obser refereed Tuorla Observatory, (Helsinki 918 universities study, Finnish previous the For Choosing trends. some detect to The ways none. find u probably to are is: try answer institutional approaches short after The bibliometric and universities. of Turku before c sort done more what research our astronomical ask with we out-of-step is study, therefore this and 1998 in happened aiosbsdo iloerc r,hwvr a 1995-2004 however, period are, the bibliometrics previously for on has astronomy based author of parisons The field the field. in same institutes the in working stitutes h eateto hsc n20 n eaeasprt nti unit separate a became Astronomy. and and 2008 Physics O of in Tuorla o Physics the of Turku, Department In Department Helsinki Physics. the of of of University Department size the the universiti with the 2010, merged Finnish to of of limit As structure lower the mergers. a in changes imposed major 2009 caused of institu Act the University when new comparisons institutional to happens What Mergers of Impact in included be to institutiona likely and more evaluation now of is importance administrative 1990s early a the e.g. in – missing change can itself data bibliometric c *oyih er*Atooia oit ftePacific the of Society Astronomical Year** **Copyright tteUiest fOl,temre ihteDprmn fP of Department the with merger the Oulu, of University the At iloerc a ea sflto o vlaigresearch evaluating for tool useful an be can Bibliometrics rsne yteato tteLS ofrnei 06 h d The institution wider 2006. a in how conference determine to V revisited LISA are the study at ous author the by presented Abstract. Finland Helsinki, Bo of PO Library, University Campus Kumpula Library, University Helsinki Isaksson Eva Astronomy Finnish Changing the of Evaluation Bibliometric oprsn ewe eerhunits. research between comparisons A & A hsi olwu ntebbimti vlaino Finnis of evaluation bibliometric the on follow-up a is This ffi 1 ito aata a oeie kth or sketchy sometimes was that data liation Astronomy ff ce ymn hnefcos The factors. change many by ected oprsn sincreasing. is comparisons l aoyi uk,Ol Univer- Oulu Turku, in vatory egr tteHlik and Helsinki the at mergers e hne nFnad the Finland, In change? tes & sadldt departmental to led and es 20.Oeo h findings the of One -2004. ogase sta ecan we that is answer long Astrophysics lbs n egr a mergers and base al Iaso 07.Com- 2007). (Isaksson sraoymre with merged bservatory retcmaios In comparisons. urrent oprdfu Finnish four compared eu hncomparing when seful eerhppr,a the as papers, research srnm a been has Astronomy f h e Department new the n tatooyuisat units astronomy st oei eaaein- separate in done eatet.This departments. yishdalready had hysics t rmteprevi- the from ata 4 00014 64, x . astronomy h ff ect 2 Isaksson

For a second study, 622 A&A papers with a Finnish affiliation published between 1995 and 2009 and their citations were harvested from the Institute for Scientific In- formation. Compared to the previous study that included complete publication data but required slow data mining, this was relatively easy to do. The use of just one journal guarantees that the affiliations are fairly consistent. Some physics research has been done by astronomy departments while some astronomy has been done in physics de- partments. As all the papers in A&A can be considered astronomy papers, the question of whether one should draw a line between physics and astronomy papers can be ig- nored for this study. Can we foresee the impact of mergers by including A&A papers by the Helsinki Department of Physics and the rest of the Turku Department of Physics and Astron- omy with the Observatory papers in our analyses, so that we can compare astronomy research done by universities instead of by institutes?

Comparison by Papers

From Figure 1, it is easy to see that both Turku and Helsinki benefit from including the papers by astronomy and physics departments in our analyses, giving both a stronger long-term lead compared to Oulu and Mets¨ahovi. It is worth noting that at Oulu, where the institutional merger happened in the late 1990s, giving Oulu an initial boost, the number of A&A papers has been decreasing recently.

Figure 1. Refereed Finnish A&A papers per year according to ISI 1995-2009. Tuorla refers to the Tuorla Observatory, HU Obs to the University of Helsinki Ob- servatory. Turku and Helsinki are notably different after adding the A&A papers of their respective physics departments. Bibliometric Evaluation of the Changing Finnish Astronomy 3

Comparison by Citations

Figure 2. Total citations 1995-2004 (left). A&A citations 1995-2009 (right), showing the additional non-observatory papers.

Figure 2 shows us that the ranking of both the institutes and universities is fairly consistent with the earlier, overall results. At the departmental level, both the Helsinki Observatory and the Tuorla Observatory received an equal number of citations. When we add physics papers, Turku gains quite visibly. One can ask whether it has benefited from its earlier institutional restructuring. It also should be noted that the Mets¨ahovi A&A citations don’t seem to quite match its publishing activity.

Conclusion

In terms of A&A citations, both Tuorla and Helsinki have been consistently strong. But it is Tuorla that gains more from including the astronomy papers by people not working at the observatory. These results are interesting, but they are still based just on A&A papers. Including the papers from four additional journals would represent about 70% of all the papers and give more reliable results. Is there really a trend? We cannot know until additional years have gone by to see what is happening, with new changes to blur the results. Acknowledgments. The author has received the University of Helsinki Chancel- lor’s travel grant for LISA VI. Thanks to Professor Karri Muinonen for asking the ini- tial question : ”how can we measure instutional change in bibliometric terms, ” and to “Pick U Up” by Adam Lambert for cheering up the author during times of institutional turmoil.

References

Isaksson, E. 2007, in ASP Conf. Ser. Vol. 377, Library and Information Services in Astronomy V: Common Challenges, Uncommon Solutions, ed. S. Richetts, C. Birdie, & E. Isaksson (San Francisco: ASP), 111