Exploring alternative metrics of scholarly performance in the social sciences and humanities in Taiwan

Kuang-hua Chen, Muh-chyun Tang (), Chun-mei Wang and Jieh Hsiang
Additional contact information
Kuang-hua Chen: National Taiwan University
Muh-chyun Tang: National Taiwan University
Chun-mei Wang: National Taiwan University
Jieh Hsiang: National Taiwan University

Scientometrics, 2015, vol. 102, issue 1, No 6, 97-112

Abstract: Abstract Research output and impact metrics derived from commercial citation databases such as Web of Science and Scopus have become the de facto indicators of scholarly performance across different disciplines and regions. However, it has been pointed out that the existing metrics are largely inadequate to reflect scholars’ overall peer-mediated performance, especially in the social sciences and humanities (SSH) where publication channels are more diverse. In this paper alternative metrics exploring a variety of formal and informal communication channels were proposed, with the aim of better reflecting SSH scholarship. Data for a group of SSH scholars in Taiwan on these metrics were collected. Principal component analysis revealed four underlying dimensions represented by the 18 metrics. Multiple-regression analyses were then performed to examine how well each of these dimensions predicted the academic standing of the scholars, measured by the number of public grants awarded and prestigious research awards received. Differences in the significance of the predictors were found between the social sciences and humanities. The results suggest the need to consider disciplinary differences when evaluating scholarly performance.

Keywords: Research evaluation; Bibliometrics; Evaluation metrics; Altmetrics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (14)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11192-014-1420-6 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

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:spr:scient:v:102:y:2015:i:1:d:10.1007_s11192-014-1420-6

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/11192

DOI: 10.1007/s11192-014-1420-6

Access Statistics for this article

Scientometrics is currently edited by Wolfgang Glänzel

More articles in Scientometrics from Springer, Akadémiai Kiadó
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().