Bibliometric differences – a case study in bibliometric evaluation across SSH and STEM
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JD-07-2018-0108 |
| Pages | 366-378 |
| Published date | 06 March 2019 |
| Date | 06 March 2019 |
| Author | Poul Meier Melchiorsen |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science,Records management & preservation,Document management,Classification & cataloguing,Information behaviour & retrieval,Collection building & management,Scholarly communications/publishing,Information & knowledge management,Information management & governance,Information management,Information & communications technology,Internet |
Bibliometric differences –a case
study in bibliometric evaluation
across SSH and STEM
Poul Meier Melchiorsen
Aalborg Universitetsbibliotek, Aalborg, Denmark
Abstract
Purpose –The purpose of this paper is to acknowledge that there are bibliometric differences betweenSocial
Sciences and Humanities (SSH) vs Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM). It is not so
that either SSH or STEM has the right way of doing research or working as a scholarly community.
Accordingly, research evaluation is not done properly in one framework based on either a method from SSH
or STEM. However, performing research evaluation in two separate frameworks also has disadvantages.
One way of scholarly practice may be favored unintentionally in evaluations and in research profiling, which
is necessary for job and grant applications.
Design/methodology/approach –In the case study, the authors propose a tool where it may be possible,
on one hand, to evaluate across disciplines and on the other hand to keep the multifaceted perspective on the
disciplines. Case data describe professors at an SSH and a STEM department at Aalborg University. Ten
partial indicators are compiled to build a performance web –a multidimensional description –and a
one-dimensional ranking of professors at the two departments. The partial indicators are selected in a way
that they should cover a broad variety of scholarly practice and differences in data availability.
Findings –A tool which can be used both for a one-dimensional ranking of researchers and for a
multidimensional description is described in the paper.
Research limitations/implications –Limitations of the study are that panel-based evaluation is left out
and that the number of partial indicators is set to 10.
Originality/value –The paper describes a new tool that may be an inspiration for practitioners in
research analytics.
Keywords Benchmarking, Scholarly communications, Research impact, Societal impact,
Bibliometric model, Knowledge frameworks
Paper type Case study
Introduction
You may find at least two distinct “research areas”in the world of research: the area of
Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) and the area of Social Sciences
and Humanities (SSH). With a catching title, Olmos-Peñuela et al. (2014) describe issues in
evaluating and analyzing research from both areas: “Are ‘STEM from Mars and SSH from
Venus’?”They question the widespread assumption that STEM research is more useful
than SSH research, and they find that STEM and SSH research are useful in different ways.
Is it possible to make comparisons across research areas? Is it possible to evaluate
research at a full-fledged university, where using a certain metric for evaluation may favor
either the STEM or the SSH environment (Melchiorsen and Thidemann, 2016)?
Several solutions have been proposed in the search for a bibliometric[1] tool, which may
give a proper representation of research across disciplines. The use of citations in
bibliometrics grew out of Eugene Garfield’s work on the Science Citation Index (SCI) in the
1960s and the 1970s (De Bellis, 2009, p. xx). The SCI became the Web of Science (WoS);
Journal of Documentation
Vol. 75 No. 2, 2019
pp. 366-378
Emerald Publishing Limited
0022-0418
DOI 10.1108/JD-07-2018-0108
Received 5 July 2018
Revised 30 September 2018
Accepted 30 September 2018
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/0022-0418.htm
© Poul Meier Melchiorsen. Published by Emerald Publishing Limited. This article is published under
the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate
and create derivative works of this article ( for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject
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366
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