Beyond Scientometrics

Numerous websites are currently being used by researchers for sharing and disseminating research, some of which are CiteULike, BibSonomy, Connotea, Mendeley, ResearchGate, etc. For measuring this data, scientists create alternative indicators related to traditional indicators like bibliometric indicators, scientometric indicators. The main purpose of these indicators is that with such huge amount of information available, some specific tools and techniques are required to filter and evaluate the research outcomes. These indicators reveal the societal and unknown impact of the work that traditional metrics are unable to do. The most prominent indicators for this purpose include Altmetrics or article metrics or alternative metrics. The detailed discussion is provided in this chapter.

Scientometric Indicators and Assumptions

To better understand all the aspects and components of scientific research activities, this book explores and discusses the research indicators applied for research evaluation and their categorization. The present chapter provides a broad overview of what this book comprises and its main assumptions.

H-Index and Its Variants

Researchers suggest that the use of h-index for the purpose of the evaluation of research performance, its dependencies like the academic career, and the subject field of his/her publications should always be considered and taken into account for fruitful results. Also, h-index should be complemented with its variants to reduce its shortcomings. In the future, researchers should focus on testing the validity and applicability of the existing h-index variants rather than developing the new ones. Further, it is not possible to reflect the scientist's or researcher's academic contribution merely in terms of numerical values. The quantities to signify research quality should be considered with a grain of salt.

Evolution of Literature on Scientometric Indicators

An unbiased and reasonable research evaluation should reflect the diversity and impact of research productivity. The evaluation of scientific research is essential to determine its achievement, reputation, growth, and progress of an individual or an institution. In this context, production and quality of scholarly content offer a strong foundation for its rational evaluation. The citations along with the number of scientific publications are predominantly used to evaluate research content. The use of scientometric indicators is of great use in the measurement and evaluation of the scientific research output, but at the same instant, it requires a great carefulness in use.

Scientometric Indicators

In research, indicators are partial since each indicator is susceptible to methodological and technical problems that require both decisions by the indicator developer as well as corrections and modifications at researcher's level. Considering the different limitations, the question arises whether one can use research indicators in an efficient way forever. Given the fact that we now know quite a lot about the strengths and weaknesses of such indicators, it does not contradict their use, but an inexperienced handling of such indicators should be avoided.

From Bibliometrics to Scientometrics

The growing computational power facilitates much demanded comparative and relative study of publication output, journal impact, and collaborative publications. This significant growth of data, its availability, and easy access has given rise to the range of metrics and indicators which are applied at different levels of research assessment. These indicators are available to measure the quality and impact of the research output at individual, institutional, or national level. The availability of these indicators has highlighted their application depending upon the aim and subject of assessment and evaluation of research.

Introduction to Research Evaluation

With the availability of large corpus of potential indicators and their extensive use, it is imperative to examine and scrutinize the features of these indicators in order to make them eligible for use by researchers, evaluators, and administrators. The significance of the book is to draw attention of research community towards the huge number of scientometric indicators that are available and are applied to evaluate the research content at various levels. It aims to provide a “one stop shop” to the future researchers where they can learn about the full range of research indicators available to them for the purpose of the evaluation and assessment of scientific literature.