ESEP 8:pp11 (2008) - doi:10.3354/esep00088
THEME SECTION
Validating research performance metrics against peer rankings
Stevan Harnad*
ABSTRACT: A rich and diverse set of potential bibliometric and scientometric predictors of research performance quality and importance are emerging today—from the classic metrics (publication counts, journal impact factors and individual article/author citation counts) to promising new online metrics such as download counts, hub/authority scores and growth/decay chronometrics. In and of themselves, however, metrics are circular: They need to be jointly tested and validated against what it is that they purport to measure and predict, with each metric weighted according to its contribution to their joint predictive power. The natural criterion against which to validate metrics is expert evaluation by peers; a unique opportunity to do this is offered by the 2008 UK Research Assessment Exercise, in which a full spectrum of metrics can be jointly tested, field by field, against peer rankings.
KEY WORDS: Bibliometrics · Citation analysis · Journal impact factor · Metric validation · Multiple regression · Peer review · Research assessment · Scientometrics · Web metrics
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ESEP THEME SECTION: The use and misuse of bibliometric indices in evaluating scholarly performance