The Research Information Network (RIN) has announced a new report that highlights key issues both for those who produce bibliometric analyses of research performance, and for those who commission and make use of such work.
Bibliometrics is observed to be playing an increasing role in assessing the performance of researchers across the world. But the complexities of both the data sources and the methods of analysis used are little understood by many of those who wish to make use of the results. It has been noted that even measuring the UK's share of the global production of scientific publications is highly complex, with traps for the unwary and huge differences in the published figures.
Titled 'The UK's share of world research outputs: an investigation of different data sources and time trends', the report is the result of work undertaken by Grant Lewison and colleagues in the CIBER group at University College London. It analyses the sources and methods used in seven reports that give figures for the UK's percentage presence in world science: Evidence Ltd, Forskningsradet (Research Council of Norway), National Science Foundation, Observatoire des Science and Technologies, SCImago, the European Commission and the Wellcome Trust.
The figures given in different published reports for the UK's percentage share in world science vary by as much as 40 percent, it has been observed. With such major differences, it is difficult for policy-makers and others concerned with the health of the UK research base to get a clear picture of how well it is performing. The RIN report explains how these difference arise, and reflects on the implications for the measurement of UK scientific performance. It emphasises that producers and publishers of bibliometric data must make much more transparent the choices they have made as to data sources and methodology, and the implications of those choices.
Further, the report calls for policy-makers and others interested in the health of the UK research base to take greater care to interrogate the figures that they use and to present them accurately. Otherwise the risk is that policy and related decisions will be made on the basis of false assessments. The report is available online at www.rin.ac.uk/uk_presence_research.
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