Szomszor Martin, Adams Jonathan, Fry Ryan, Gebert Chris, Pendlebury David A, Potter Ross W K, Rogers Gordon
Institute for Scientific Information, Clarivate, London, United Kingdom.
Institute for Scientific Information, Clarivate, Philadelphia, PA, United States.
Front Res Metr Anal. 2021 Feb 9;5:628703. doi: 10.3389/frma.2020.628703. eCollection 2020.
Many academic analyses of good practice in the use of bibliometric data address only technical aspects and fail to account for and appreciate user requirements, expectations, and actual practice. Bibliometric indicators are rarely the only evidence put before any user group. In the present state of knowledge, it is more important to consider how quantitative evaluation can be made simple, transparent, and readily understood than it is to focus unduly on precision, accuracy, or scholarly notions of purity. We discuss how the interpretation of 'performance' from a presentation using accurate but summary bibliometrics can change when iterative deconstruction and visualization of the same dataset is applied. From the perspective of a research manager with limited resources, investment decisions can easily go awry at governmental, funding program, and institutional levels. By exploring select real-life data samples we also show how the specific composition of each dataset can influence interpretive outcomes.
许多关于文献计量数据良好实践的学术分析仅涉及技术层面，未能考虑和理解用户的需求、期望及实际做法。文献计量指标很少是呈现在任何用户群体面前的唯一证据。就目前的知识水平而言，更重要的是思考如何使定量评估变得简单、透明且易于理解，而非过度关注精确性、准确性或学术上的纯粹性概念。我们讨论了，当对同一数据集进行迭代解构和可视化处理时，从使用准确但概括性的文献计量学进行的展示中对“绩效”的解读会如何改变。从资源有限的研究管理者的角度来看，在政府、资助项目和机构层面，投资决策很容易出错。通过探究一些实际生活中的数据样本，我们还展示了每个数据集的具体构成如何能够影响解读结果。
