Abstract
This study describes a novel method of assessing credit
for authorship and citations received, and argues that
conventional bibliometric assessments used for policy
development lead to misguided conclusions about how best
research is created, and what type policies may promote
research excellence. Exploring Finnish research 1995-2009
based on ISI data, we demonstrate that the nature of the
Finnish "hot papers" or research frontiers (papers that
receive most citations within two years after
publication) doesn't correspond with the idealized vision
of "high quality research", being highly national and
created by relatively small author teams. As such, it
also resembles closely research with no impact, i.e. the
non-cited papers. These two differ from the "other cited
papers", which are authored by larger and highly
international teams. While we describe the author team
structure and national nature for different cohorts of
scientific excellence, our central result is the
observation that in terms production of excellence, whole
citations created per author, small Finnish author teams
are slightly more productive than large international
author teams. We discuss at some length the
methodological and policy implications of our results,
especially as far as they give rise to the suspicion that
conventional (Finnish) policy efforts to foster research
excellence target the middle-tier papers and target
poorly the best papers that resemble closely the worst
ones. We also demonstrate how results and conclusions are
highly dependent whether research excellence assessment
focuses on papers or alternatively researchers. Finally,
we consider how "scientific excellence" should be defined
and measured in national contexts.
Original language | English |
---|---|
Title of host publication | Proceedings of ISSI 2013 Vienna, Volume II |
Editors | Juan Gorraiz, Edgar Schiebel, Christian Gumpenberger, Marianne Hörlesberger, Henk Moed |
Pages | 1506-1527 |
Volume | 2 |
Publication status | Published - 2013 |
MoE publication type | Not Eligible |
Event | 14th International Society of Scientometrics and Informetrics Conference, ISSI 2013 - Wien, Austria Duration: 15 Jul 2013 → 19 Jul 2013 |
Conference
Conference | 14th International Society of Scientometrics and Informetrics Conference, ISSI 2013 |
---|---|
Abbreviated title | ISSI 2013 |
Country | Austria |
City | Wien |
Period | 15/07/13 → 19/07/13 |
Keywords
- research collaboration
- research front
- Finland
- research evaluation
- citation analysis
- research excellence