IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/infome/v14y2020i4s1751157720301139.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Introducing recalibrated academic performance indicators in the evaluation of individuals’ research performance: A case study from Eastern Europe

Author

Listed:
  • Csomós, György

Abstract

In Hungary, the highest and most prestigious scientific qualification is considered to be the Doctor of Science (DSc) title being awarded by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. The academic performance indicators of the DSc title are of high importance in the evaluation of individuals’ research performance not only when a researcher applies for obtaining a DSc title, but also during promotions and appointments at universities, and in the case of the evaluation of applications for scientific titles and degrees, and the assessment of applications for funding. In the Section of Earth Sciences encompassing nine related disciplines, rather than carrying out a straightforward bibliometric analysis, the performance indicators were designed as a result of a consensual agreement between leading academicians, each of whom represented a particular discipline. Therefore, the minimum values of the indicators, required to be fulfilled if one is applying for a DSc title, do not adequately reflect the actual discipline-specific performance of researchers. This problem may generate tension between researchers during the evaluation process. The main goal of this paper is to recalibrate the minimum values of four major performance indicators by taking the actual discipline-specific distance ratios into account. In addition, each minimum value will be defined by employing integer and fractional counting methods as well. The research outcome of this study can provide impetus for the Section of Earth Sciences (and eventually other sections of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences) to optimize the minimum values of the DSc title performance indicators by taking the specifics of each discipline into account. Because academic performance indicators are also employed in other Eastern European countries in the evaluation of individuals’ research performance, the methods used in that paper can be placed into a wider geographical context.

Suggested Citation

  • Csomós, György, 2020. "Introducing recalibrated academic performance indicators in the evaluation of individuals’ research performance: A case study from Eastern Europe," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 14(4).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:infome:v:14:y:2020:i:4:s1751157720301139
    DOI: 10.1016/j.joi.2020.101073
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1751157720301139
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.joi.2020.101073?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Marianne Gauffriau & Peder Olesen Larsen & Isabelle Maye & Anne Roulin-Perriard & Markus Ins, 2007. "Publication, cooperation and productivity measures in scientific research," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 73(2), pages 175-214, November.
    2. Elizabeth S. Vieira & José A. N. F. Gomes, 2009. "A comparison of Scopus and Web of Science for a typical university," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 81(2), pages 587-600, November.
    3. Bouyssou, Denis & Marchant, Thierry, 2016. "Ranking authors using fractional counting of citations: An axiomatic approach," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 10(1), pages 183-199.
    4. Amelia Bucur & Claudiu Vasile Kifor & Silvia Cristina Mărginean, 2018. "Evaluation of the quality and quantity of research results in higher education," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 52(1), pages 101-118, January.
    5. Éric Archambault & Étienne Vignola-Gagné & Grégoire Côté & Vincent Larivière & Yves Gingrasb, 2006. "Benchmarking scientific output in the social sciences and humanities: The limits of existing databases," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 68(3), pages 329-342, September.
    6. Vincent Larivière & Éric Archambault & Yves Gingras & Étienne Vignola‐Gagné, 2006. "The place of serials in referencing practices: Comparing natural sciences and engineering with social sciences and humanities," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 57(8), pages 997-1004, June.
    7. Lin, Chi-Shiou & Huang, Mu-Hsuan & Chen, Dar-Zen, 2013. "The influences of counting methods on university rankings based on paper count and citation count," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 7(3), pages 611-621.
    8. Marcin Kozak & Lutz Bornmann & Loet Leydesdorff, 2015. "How have the Eastern European countries of the former Warsaw Pact developed since 1990? A bibliometric study," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 102(2), pages 1101-1117, February.
    9. Kirsi-Mari Kallio & Tomi J. Kallio & Giuseppe Grossi, 2017. "Performance measurement in universities: ambiguities in the use of quality versus quantity in performance indicators," Public Money & Management, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 37(4), pages 293-300, June.
    10. Susanne Mikki, 2010. "Comparing Google Scholar and ISI Web of Science for Earth Sciences," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 82(2), pages 321-331, February.
    11. George Vrettas & Mark Sanderson, 2015. "Conferences versus journals in computer science," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 66(12), pages 2674-2684, December.
    12. de Moya-Anegon, Felix & Guerrero-Bote, Vicente P. & Lopez-Illescas, Carmen & Moed, Henk F., 2018. "Statistical relationships between corresponding authorship, international co-authorship and citation impact of national research systems," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 12(4), pages 1251-1262.
    13. Dorte Henriksen, 2016. "The rise in co-authorship in the social sciences (1980–2013)," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 107(2), pages 455-476, May.
    14. Nils T. Hagen, 2010. "Harmonic publication and citation counting: sharing authorship credit equitably – not equally, geometrically or arithmetically," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 84(3), pages 785-793, September.
    15. Juan Gorraiz & Christian Gumpenberger & Thomas Glade, 2016. "On the bibliometric coordinates of four different research fields in Geography," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 107(2), pages 873-897, May.
    16. Kulczycki, Emanuel & Korzeń, Marcin & Korytkowski, Przemysław, 2017. "Toward an excellence-based research funding system: Evidence from Poland," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 11(1), pages 282-298.
    17. Philippe Mongeon & Adèle Paul-Hus, 2016. "The journal coverage of Web of Science and Scopus: a comparative analysis," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 106(1), pages 213-228, January.
    18. Diana Hicks, 1999. "The difficulty of achieving full coverage of international social science literature and the bibliometric consequences," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 44(2), pages 193-215, February.
    19. Gualberto Buela-Casal & Izabela Zych, 2012. "What do the scientists think about the impact factor?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 92(2), pages 281-292, August.
    20. Truyken L.B. Ossenblok & Frederik T. Verleysen & Tim C.E. Engels, 2014. "Coauthorship of journal articles and book chapters in the social sciences and humanities (2000–2010)," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 65(5), pages 882-897, May.
    21. António Osório, 2018. "On the impossibility of a perfect counting method to allocate the credits of multi-authored publications," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 116(3), pages 2161-2173, September.
    22. Jieyong Wang & Zhigao Liu, 2014. "A bibliometric analysis on rural studies in human geography and related disciplines," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 101(1), pages 39-59, October.
    23. Sivertsen, Gunnar & Rousseau, Ronald & Zhang, Lin, 2019. "Measuring scientific contributions with modified fractional counting," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 13(2), pages 679-694.
    24. Diana Hicks & Paul Wouters & Ludo Waltman & Sarah de Rijcke & Ismael Rafols, 2015. "Bibliometrics: The Leiden Manifesto for research metrics," Nature, Nature, vol. 520(7548), pages 429-431, April.
    25. Waltman, Ludo & van Eck, Nees Jan, 2015. "Field-normalized citation impact indicators and the choice of an appropriate counting method," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 9(4), pages 872-894.
    26. Lorna Wildgaard & Jesper W. Schneider & Birger Larsen, 2014. "A review of the characteristics of 108 author-level bibliometric indicators," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 101(1), pages 125-158, October.
    27. Teja Tscharntke & Michael E Hochberg & Tatyana A Rand & Vincent H Resh & Jochen Krauss, 2007. "Author Sequence and Credit for Contributions in Multiauthored Publications," PLOS Biology, Public Library of Science, vol. 5(1), pages 1-2, January.
    28. Blaise Cronin, 2001. "Hyperauthorship: A postmodern perversion or evidence of a structural shift in scholarly communication practices?," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 52(7), pages 558-569.
    29. Schreiber, M. & Malesios, C.C. & Psarakis, S., 2012. "Exploratory factor analysis for the Hirsch index, 17 h-type variants, and some traditional bibliometric indicators," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 6(3), pages 347-358.
    30. Brito, Ricardo & Rodríguez-Navarro, Alonso, 2019. "Evaluating research and researchers by the journal impact factor: Is it better than coin flipping?," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 13(1), pages 314-324.
    31. G. Van Hooydonk, 1997. "Fractional counting of multiauthored publications: Consequences for the impact of authors," Journal of the American Society for Information Science, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 48(10), pages 944-945, October.
    32. Zhou, Ping & Leydesdorff, Loet, 2011. "Fractional counting of citations in research evaluation: A cross- and interdisciplinary assessment of the Tsinghua University in Beijing," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 5(3), pages 360-368.
    33. Dorte Henriksen, 2018. "What factors are associated with increasing co-authorship in the social sciences? A case study of Danish Economics and Political Science," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 114(3), pages 1395-1421, March.
    34. Lin Zhang & Ronald Rousseau & Gunnar Sivertsen, 2017. "Science deserves to be judged by its contents, not by its wrapping: Revisiting Seglen's work on journal impact and research evaluation," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 12(3), pages 1-18, March.
    35. Martín-Martín, Alberto & Orduna-Malea, Enrique & Thelwall, Mike & Delgado López-Cózar, Emilio, 2018. "Google Scholar, Web of Science, and Scopus: A systematic comparison of citations in 252 subject categories," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 12(4), pages 1160-1177.
    36. Dejan Pajić, 2015. "Globalization of the social sciences in Eastern Europe: genuine breakthrough or a slippery slope of the research evaluation practice?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 102(3), pages 2131-2150, March.
    37. Przemysław Korytkowski & Emanuel Kulczycki, 2019. "Examining how country-level science policy shapes publication patterns: the case of Poland," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 119(3), pages 1519-1543, June.
    38. Gauffriau, Marianne, 2017. "A categorization of arguments for counting methods for publication and citation indicators," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 11(3), pages 672-684.
    39. Leo Egghe & Ronald Rousseau & Guido Van Hooydonk, 2000. "Methods for accrediting publications to authors or countries: Consequences for evaluation studies," Journal of the American Society for Information Science, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 51(2), pages 145-157.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Hladchenko, Myroslava & Moed, Henk F., 2021. "The effect of publication traditions and requirements in research assessment and funding policies upon the use of national journals in 28 post-socialist countries," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 15(4).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Waltman, Ludo, 2016. "A review of the literature on citation impact indicators," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 10(2), pages 365-391.
    2. Osório, António (António Miguel), 2019. "The value and credits of n-authors publications," Working Papers 2072/376026, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Department of Economics.
    3. Andrea Mervar & Maja Jokić, 2022. "Core-periphery nexus in the EU social sciences: bibliometric perspective," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(10), pages 5793-5817, October.
    4. Liu, Xuan Zhen & Fang, Hui, 2023. "A geometric counting method adaptive to the author number," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 17(2).
    5. Aman, Valeria & Besselaar, Peter van den, 2024. "Authorship regulations in performance-based funding systems and publication behaviour – A case study of German medical faculties," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 18(2).
    6. Yves Fassin, 2020. "The HF-rating as a universal complement to the h-index," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 125(2), pages 965-990, November.
    7. Andreea Mironescu & Alina Moroșanu & Anca-Diana Bibiri, 2023. "The regional dynamics of multilingual publishing in web of science: A statistical analysis of central and eastern european journals and researchers in linguistics," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 128(2), pages 1133-1162, February.
    8. Hladchenko, Myroslava & Moed, Henk F., 2021. "The effect of publication traditions and requirements in research assessment and funding policies upon the use of national journals in 28 post-socialist countries," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 15(4).
    9. Rahman, Mohammad Tariqur & Regenstein, Joe Mac & Kassim, Noor Lide Abu & Haque, Nazmul, 2017. "The need to quantify authors’ relative intellectual contributions in a multi-author paper," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 11(1), pages 275-281.
    10. António Osório, 2018. "On the impossibility of a perfect counting method to allocate the credits of multi-authored publications," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 116(3), pages 2161-2173, September.
    11. Raminta Pranckutė, 2021. "Web of Science (WoS) and Scopus: The Titans of Bibliographic Information in Today’s Academic World," Publications, MDPI, vol. 9(1), pages 1-59, March.
    12. Pär Sundling, 2023. "Author contributions and allocation of authorship credit: testing the validity of different counting methods in the field of chemical biology," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 128(5), pages 2737-2762, May.
    13. Ramón A. Feenstra & Emilio Delgado López-Cózar, 2022. "Philosophers’ appraisals of bibliometric indicators and their use in evaluation: from recognition to knee-jerk rejection," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(4), pages 2085-2103, April.
    14. Gerhard Reichmann & Christian Schlögl, 2022. "On the possibilities of presenting the research performance of an institute over a long period of time: the case of the Institute of Information Science at the University of Graz in Austria," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(6), pages 3193-3223, June.
    15. Jinseok Kim & Jana Diesner, 2014. "A network-based approach to coauthorship credit allocation," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 101(1), pages 587-602, October.
    16. Sandro Tarkhan-Mouravi, 2020. "Traditional indicators inflate some countries’ scientific impact over 10 times," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 123(1), pages 337-356, April.
    17. Denis Kosyakov & Andrey Guskov, 2022. "Reasons and consequences of changes in Russian research assessment policies," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(8), pages 4609-4630, August.
    18. Zaida Chinchilla-Rodríguez & Cassidy R Sugimoto & Vincent Larivière, 2019. "Follow the leader: On the relationship between leadership and scholarly impact in international collaborations," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(6), pages 1-18, June.
    19. Wolfgang G. Stock & Isabelle Dorsch & Gerhard Reichmann & Christian Schlögl, 2023. "Labor productivity, labor impact, and co-authorship of research institutions: publications and citations per full-time equivalents," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 128(1), pages 363-377, January.
    20. Yannick Berker, 2018. "Golden-ratio as a substitute to geometric and harmonic counting to determine multi-author publication credit," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 114(3), pages 839-857, March.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:infome:v:14:y:2020:i:4:s1751157720301139. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/joi .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.