RESEARCH BRIEF RATES OF RETURN TO CITATION
| Date | 01 February 1996 |
| Published date | 01 February 1996 |
| Pages | 188-197 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/eb026967 |
| Author | BLAISE CRONIN |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Library & information science |
RESEARCH BRIEF
RATES OF RETURN TO CITATION
BLAISE CRONIN
bcronin@indiana.edu
School of Library and Information Science, Indiana University
Bloomington, IN
47405-1801,
USA
Research shows that the rates of return to citation are substantial in
the context of the academic reward system. Since quantitative
performance measures, notably publication and citation counts, are
associated strongly with life-cycle remuneration and career mobility,
both should be utilised in research assessment exercises. This paper
brings together empirical findings from the non-interacting research
literatures of economics and information science to make the case
for using citation rates as a valid and cost-effective proxy for quality
in certain disciplines.
CONTEXT
IN 1986 THE UGC (University Grants Committee) conducted the first-ever
research selectivity exercise in British university departments. Since then,
Research Assessment Exercises (RAES), as they are now known, have become an
inescapable feature of donnish life in the
UK.
If nothing
else,
these rolling reviews
of university departments have helped focus critical attention on the validity
and reliability of the different measures used by, and available to, members of
the review groups responsible for producing the quality rankings for the seventy-
two subject areas covered by the exercise [1].
Despite changes in the criteria and conduct of
RAES,
there is residual scep-
ticism of attempts to define and measure the quality of research and scholarship,
not least when it is proposed that evaluation be based on quantitative, in
particular bibliometric, indicators (e.g. Anderson [2]). There are signs, however,
that the
UK
is becoming more outcomes-focused: the ESRC (Economic and Social
Research Council) has developed a Research Activity and Publications
Information Database (RAPID) which contains summary information on all
research funded by the Council [3], and the Wellcome Trust has developed a
commercial service for tracking acknowledgements in biomedical journal articles
to research funding agencies
[4].
In the us, impressionistic evidence suggests that
publication and citation metrics are more readily accepted and more liberally
applied, especially in the case of promotion and tenure decisions, or when
programme comparisons are being undertaken by funding bodies.
Journal
of
Documentation,
vol. 52, no. 2, June 1996, pp. 188-197
188
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