Full Description
Policy makers, academic administrators, scholars, and members of the public are clamoring for indicators of the value and reach of research. The question of how to quantify the impact and importance of research and scholarly output, from the publication of books and journal articles to the indexing of citations and tweets, is a critical one in predicting innovation, and in deciding what sorts of research is supported and whom is hired to carry it out.
There is a wide set of data and tools available for measuring research, but they are often used in crude ways, and each have their own limitations and internal logics. Measuring Research: What Everyone Needs to Know® will provide, for the first time, an accessible account of the methods used to gather and analyze data on research output and impact. Following a brief history of scholarly communication and its measurement -- from traditional peer review to crowdsourced review on the social web -- the book will look at the classification of knowledge and academic disciplines, the differences between citations and references, the role of peer review, national research evaluation exercises, the tools used to measure research, the many different types of measurement indicators, and how to measure interdisciplinarity. The book also addresses emerging issues within scholarly communication, including whether or not measurement promotes a "publish or perish" culture, fraud in research, or "citation cartels." It will also look at the stakeholders behind these analytical tools, the adverse effects of these quantifications, and the future of research measurement.
Contents
1. THE BASICS
What is this book about?
Why measure research?
Who is this book for?
What are the historical foundations for measuring research?
What are the theoretical foundations of measuring research?
What is an indicator?
What are the data sources for measuring research?
2. THE DATA
What is a citation index?
What is the Web of Science?
What is Scopus?
What is Google Scholar Citations?
What are the differences between the main citation indexes?
What are the cultural biases of data sources?
How are disciplines defined?
3. THE INDICATORS
How is authorship defined and measured?
How is research production defined and measured?
How is collaboration defined and measured?
How is interdisciplinarity defined and measured?
How is impact defined and measured?
Why is research cited?
How do citation rates vary by time and discipline?
What is not cited?
How concentrated are citations?
How are citations counted?
What is the difference between references and citations?
What are self-citations and self-references?
How is obsolescence measured?
What is the journal Impact Factor?
What is the Eigenfactor Score?
What is Source Normalized Impact (SNIP)?
What is the SCImago Journal Rank?
What is CiteScore?
What is the h-index?
What are altmetrics?
How is research funding measured?
What are indicators for applied research?
What is the relationship between science indicators and peer review?
4. THE BIG PICTURE
Who controls research measurement?
What are the responsibilities of stakeholders?
What are the adverse effects of measurement?
What is the future of measuring research?
FURTHER READING
INDEX
