Scaling Analysis of Author Level Bibliometric Indicators

Despite of the concerns from the bibliometric community, evaluation of the individual through bibliometric indices is already performed as a form of ‘pseudo peer review’ in selection of candidates for tenure, in background checks of potential employees’ publicationand citation impact, and in appraisal of funding applications. As part of developing the ACUMEN portfolio we therefore undertook an extensive review of 114 bibliometric indicators in Wildgaard, Schneider and Larsen (2014) to identify 1) which author level indices are useful to document the effect of publication performance, 2) identify which scientific activities it is possible to measure and with which indices, 3) analyse the applicability of these indices by discussing the strengths and weakness of each one, and 4) identify if there is a need for any additional novel indicators to measures the performance of individuals. The review confirmed that there is no immediate need to develop new bibliometric indicators. There is a wealth of indicators to choose from, some used in practice and some theoretical only. There is however a need to understand the usefulness of existing indicators and which ones represent independent research activities of authors. We have begun our investigation into how indicators complement each other, specifically if there is a redundancy among indicators, i.e. two or more indicators measure the same thing, and which indicators are the “best” choice in regards to four predefined disciplines. The main parameter we judge the usefulness of indicators is on their simplicity, understood as the simplicity of data collection and the simplicity of mathematical computation for each indicator (Wildgaard, Schneider & Larsen 2014). The present study is a further investigation into which effects of publishing and citing these simple indicators attempt to capture.