EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

How to use indicators to measure scientific performance: a balanced approach

Ulrich Schmoch, Torben Schubert (torben.schubert@isi.fraunhofer.de), Dorothea Jansen, Richard Heidler and Regina von Görtz

Research Evaluation, 2010, vol. 19, issue 1, 2-18

Abstract: Scientific performance should not be measured by a one-dimensional metric such as publication, since it is a multi-dimensional phenomenon. A quantitative analysis of the activities of research groups in three scientific fields demonstrates in particular the importance of sufficient numbers of PhD graduates and of contributions to the infrastructure of the scientific community, in terms of editorships or memberships of boards, etc. The results of a quantitative analysis are largely confirmed by a parallel qualitative investigation; however, both approaches complement each other by highlighting different aspects. For example, the qualitative approach conveys explicitly the demand structure for intermediary and final outputs in the qualitative approach that interlinks the activities of different research units. The results show that it is important for science policy to set appropriate incentives for all dimensions of scientific activities, i.e. not publication output exclusively, as this entails considerable hazard of distortion, endangering the sustainability of scientific research. Copyright , Beech Tree Publishing.

Date: 2010
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (22)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.3152/095820210X492477 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:rseval:v:19:y:2010:i:1:p:2-18

Access Statistics for this article

Research Evaluation is currently edited by Julia Melkers, Emanuela Reale and Thed van Leeuwen

More articles in Research Evaluation from Oxford University Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press (joanna.bergh@oup.com).

 
Page updated 2024-10-27
Handle: RePEc:oup:rseval:v:19:y:2010:i:1:p:2-18