About bibliometrics
There is an increasing need for transparent, consistent assessments of research and research institutions.
Publications and citations
New scientific knowledge is based on smaller or greater earlier discoveries. Since the 17th century, scientists have communicated and codified their findings in a relatively orderly and well defined way. Particularly important is the phenomenon of 'serial literature': publications in international journals. Publications in journals are not the only elements in this process of knowledge exchange, but they are certainly very important, particularly in the natural sciences and the medical fields.
Work of at least some importance provokes reactions from colleagues. They are the international forum by which research results are discussed. Often, these colleagues play their role as a member of the forum by giving citations in their own work to earlier work of other scientists. Particularly at a higher aggregation level, for instance the ‘oeuvre’ of a group of researchers as a whole over a longer period of time, citation counts provide a strong indicator of the international impact of research, which is an essential element of quality.
Advanced methods of counting and measuring specific properties (‘metrics’…) of published written (‘biblio’…) material is the basis of the quantitative assessment of scientific development and performance. Given the different communication practices in the various disciplines our methodology is particularly applicable to the basic and applied natural science and medical fields, increasingly to the engineering fields as well as the social & behavioural science, and less to the humanities. As far as technological developments are concerned, here the applicability of quantitative methods depends on communication and knowledge diffusion practices too, particularly in terms of patenting. A start has been made with assessing the societal relevance of scientific research.
Assessment and benchmarking
The design, construction, and application of quantitative, in particular bibliometric indicators on important aspects of science and technology draw heavily on empirical studies on publication and citation behaviour, notions of scientific quality, differences in communication practices in the different disciplines, and comparison with judgments by peers. We gained an extensive experience in the application of bibliometric analysis for research performance assessment in many disciplinary contexts. Recently, we added ranking and benchmarking analyses to our assessment studies. These experiences increased our knowledge of potential and limitations of bibliometric analysis, but also of communication practices and knowledge diffusion in scientific disciplines.
Mapping
Techniques related to data-mining based on co-citation and co-word analysis are developed and applied for ‘science mapping’, i.e., a visual representation of the structure of science and technology. Such abstract landscapes of science, with the position of the major actors on the map, are specific representations of scientific activities. We try to find optimal visual representations at different aggregation levels. By focusing on fine structure, we may observe crucial details, for instance emerging research themes. It is a challenge to identify hidden patterns in the enormous amount of data as all these publications are connected by, for instance, common references, words, and addresses. These are the first steps toward fascinating possibilities to image cognitive processes.
Data system
Given the crucial role of data in our work, it is not surprising that a considerable part of our work is devoted to the development and maintenance of a science and technology information system. This system, primarily based on the Thomson Web-of-Science (WoS) database, contains data of many millions of scientific publications for a broad range of scientific fields. Equally important is software development, in order to handle the enormous data-system and to apply complex algorithms for the calculation of a wide range of science indicators.