WHITE PAPER USING BIBLIOMETRICS IN EVALUATING RESEARCH DAVID A. PENDLEBURY RESEARCH DEPARTMENT, THOMSON REUTERS, PHILADELPHIA, PA USA SCIENTIFIC INTRODUCTION: THE MAIN TOOL OF SCIENCE Counting, measuring, comparing quantities, analyzing measurements: quantitative analysis, as Lord Kelvin’s famous observation suggests, is perhaps the main tool of science. In this century, the volume of scientific research— measuring to “know something”—and recording and communicating that knowledge through publications, has itself become enormous and complex. Science research is now such a large enterprise and the substance of scientific research is so complex and specialized that personal knowledge and experience are no longer sufficient tools for understanding trends or for making decisions. “IF YOU CAN MEASURE Yet, the need to be selective, to highlight significant their colleagues should rightly be the basis of research THAT OF WHICH YOU or promising areas of research, and to manage better evaluation. However, it should be one of several SPEAK, AND CAN investments in science is only increasing. Around the approaches to making decisions. For the inevitable bias EXPRESS IT BY A world, the purses of government, industry, education in peer review, whether intentional or inadvertent, is NUMBER, YOU KNOW and philanthropy have not grown as fast as science. widely recognized as a confounding factor in efforts to SOMETHING OF YOUR Those in universities, government offices and labs, and judge the quality of research. SUBJECT; BUT IF YOU boardrooms face pressing questions about what should BIBLIOMETRICS CANNOT MEASURE IT, be supported and what should not, or which research One such approach is bibliometrics (sometimes called YOUR KNOWLEDGE projects and researchers should receive more support scientometrics). Bibliometrics turns the main tool of IS MEAGER AND than others. science, quantitative analysis, on itself. At its most UNSATISFACTORY.” Achievements in industry can often be tracked directly fundamental, this approach to research evaluation is by counting patents and measuring, in terms of sales simply counting. The complexity is in the analysis and William Thomson, Lord Kelvin revenues, the commercial success of discoveries as they use of the numbers, for the statistics obtained can be move from the laboratory to the marketplace. However, understood as indicators of achievement or lack thereof. the achievements and trends in science are not so easily Quantitative evaluation of publication and citation data counted. And so, until relatively recently, peer review is now used in almost all nations around the globe with has been the main route by which science policymakers a sizeable science enterprise. Bibliometrics is used in and research funders have coped with decisions on what research performance evaluation, especially in university course to set for science. and government labs, and also by policymakers, However, the ever-increasing size and specialized nature research directors and administrators, information of research today makes it difficult for a small group of specialists and librarians, and researchers themselves. experts to evaluate fully and fairly the bewildering array The Development of Publication and of research, both that accomplished and that proposed. Citation Analysis A library faced with collection decisions, a foundation There are, of course, many activities and outcomes making funding choices, or a government office weighing of research that can be counted. Perhaps the most national research needs must rely on expert analysis of basic and common is number of publications, which scientific research performance. may be used as a measure of output. Citations, the Peer review still represents the standard approach to references researchers append to their papers to show research evaluation and decisions about allocating explicitly earlier work on which they have depended resources for science. Experts reviewing the work of to conduct their own investigations, shows how others . USING BIBLIOMETRICS use a work in subsequent research. Tracking citations • Weighted quantitative measures, such as papers and understanding their trends in context is a key to per researcher or citations per paper, remove evaluating the impact and influence of research. characteristics, such as the place of production, or past reputation, that color human A citation index for science was first described in 1955 by perceptions of quality. Eugene Garfield, the founder and chairman emeritus of what was then ISI, in the journal Science. He realized his For example, when we think of “the best,” it is hard vision a few years later with the production of the 1961 not to think automatically of the biggest producers, Science Citation Index®. such as individuals, labs, and universities; but those locations might not be the source of the most The original and continuing main purpose of Garfield’s important work. Likewise, quantitative research citation database is improved or expanded information analysis indicates current top performers, thus retrieval. By recording not only bibliographic information balancing human perceptions of reputation. on the journal articles covered but also the cited references in these journal articles, Dr. Garfield offered The Growing Use of Bibliometrics researchers a way to find articles relevant to their work For these reasons and others, nations with significant that they would not otherwise turn up by searching science enterprises have embraced bibliometrics. Today, author names, title words, or subject headings alone. bibliometrics programs with large teams of analysts are firmly established in many nations, and these groups The operating principle of a citation index is this: If a issue bibliometric reports, often called science indicators researcher knows of a publication important to his or studies, at regular intervals. her work, a citation index would allow the researcher to identify journal articles published subsequent to that A few such groups are the National Science Foundation work that cited it. On the assumption that the citing (United States); the European Commission; and journal article is related in some way to the substance Japan’s National Institute for Informatics (NII), National of the cited work, the user of the citation index may, Institute for Science and Technology Policy (NISTEP), as it were, search forward in time to uncover studies of and Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI). interest potentially profitable for the researcher’s work. Other nations with active bibliometrics groups include Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Chile, China, Finland, France, It did not escape Garfield’s notice that such a database Germany, Israel, Italy, The Netherlands, Norway, could serve other purposes as well, such as monitoring Portugal, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, and analyzing the structure and growth of science. Switzerland, and Taiwan. In almost all cases, the Others, too, saw this possibility. Among them are the publication and citation data of Thomson Reuters form historian of science Derek J. de Solla Price, author of the basis of their bibliometric analyses. the 1963 classic Little Science, Big Science, and the sociologists of science Robert K. Merton, Jonathan TEN RULES FOR USING PUBLICatiON and Stephen Cole, Warren Hagstrom, and Diana AND CitatiON ANALYSIS Crane. Francis Narin of CHI Research in the United In light of science’s ever-growing complexity and the States was also an early proponent and pioneer in challenge of rationing limited resources, government using ISI publication and citation data to analyze policymakers, managers, and others turn to quantitative science, particularly through his influential Evaluative analysis of research to help make their task easier. Bibliometrics of 1976. However, employing quantitative indicators of research The combination of an ever-growing corpus of performance adds an extra burden to decision-makers: publication and citation data compiled by ISI over the they must strive to define clearly the data they need and 1960s and 1970s and the simultaneous increase in work to understand the significance of the analyses.T his computing power and software applications, especially extra effort is necessary and worthwhile, both for the those developed in the 1980s and 1990s, has made greater understanding and practical help the data offer, bibliometrics a practical and even cost-effective pursuit. as well as for the beneficial effect of the data: adding fairness to evaluation and helping to prevent abuses Bibliometrics and Peer Judgment: that may arise from small-scale, closed peer review. A Two-Pronged Approach Never in its long history has ISI, now Thomson Reuters, It is important to understand what quantitative research advocated that bibliometrics supercede or replace peer analysis offers evaluators and decision makers—and judgements. Rather, publication and citation analysis what it cannot possibly deliver. For these techniques or is meant to be a supplement to peer review. The two tools can never be a substitute for human judgment. It is together—peer review and quantitative analysis of important that measurement and judgment be used in research—better inform evaluation and decisions. tandem, and that the quantitative tools are For quantitative analysis offers certain advantages used appropriately. in gathering the objective information necessary to Numbers alone can be dangerous because they decision-making: have the appearance of being authoritative.