Short Note on Scientometrics | Research Methodology | Library and Information Science

 Scientometrics is the field of study which concerns itself with measuring and analysing

scientific literature. Scientometrics is a sub-field of bibliometrics. Major research issues

include the measurement of the impact of research papers and academic journals, the

understanding of scientific citations, and the use of such measurements in policy and

management contexts. In practice there is a significant overlap between scientometrics

and other scientific fields such as information systems, information science, science of

science policy, sociology of science, and metascience.

Modern scientometrics is mostly based on the work of Derek J. de Solla Price and Eugene

Garfield. The latter created the Science Citation Index and founded the Institute for

Scientific Information which is heavily used for scientometric analysis. A dedicated

academic journal, Scientometrics, was established in 1978. The industrialization of science

increased the quantity of publications and research outcomes and the rise of the computers

allowed effective analysis of this data. While the sociology of science focused on the

behavior of scientists, scientometrics focused on the analysis of publications. Accordingly,

scientometrics is also referred to as the scientific and empirical study of science and its

outcomes.

Later, around the turn of the century, evaluation and ranking of scientists and

institutions came more into the spotlights. Based on bibliometric analysis of scientific

publications and citations, the Academic Ranking of World Universities (“Shanghai

ranking”) was first published in 2004 by the Shanghai Jiao Tong University. Impact factors

became an important tool to choose between different journals and the rankings such as

the Academic Ranking of World Universities and the Times Higher Education World

University Rankings (THE-ranking) became a leading indicator for the status of

universities. The h-index became an important indicator of the productivity and impact

of the work of a scientist. However, alternative author-level indicators has been proposed

.

Around the same time, interest of governments in evaluating research for the purpose

of assessing the impact of science funding increased. As the investments in scientific

research were included as part of the U.S. American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of

2009 (ARRA), a major economic stimulus package, programs like STAR METRICS were

set up to assess if the positive impact on the economy would actually occur.