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Tag: Bibliometrics

Bibliometrics III: The Leiden Rankings

One of my favourite bibliometric analysis tools is the criminally-underused (at least in Canada) Leiden Rankings. The nice thing about Leiden – apart from it being global in scope – is its web-based, interactive nature. Users can choose comparators by region or country, whether or not to use non-English-language papers and how to normalize for institutional size. Unlike most rankings (e.g., the Times Higher), it’s the user that’s in control. Most importantly, users choose the indicators for comparisons. One can

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March 29, 2012 1 Comment

Bibliometrics, Part Deux: Database Politics

Back in the 1950s, someone came up with the idea of creating indexes of citations in scientific journals. The Science Citation Index then appeared in 1961, and one for the social sciences followed in 1966. Ever since that time, it has been possible to answer questions like: “who publishes more articles” and “whose articles are being cited more”? With little effort, you can aggregate up from individual academics to departments or institutions, and this data feeds many international rankings systems.

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March 26, 2012 No Comments

Bibliometrics, Part the First

The shock and horror generated by proposals of teaching-only universities makes it pretty clear that most of Canadian academia thinks that research is important. So important, indeed, that we want every professor to devote 40% of his or her time (under the 40-40-20 rule) to it. Now, that’s a pretty serious commitment. Even before you get to the costs of graduate students, research grants and research infrastructure, 40% of staff time equals $2 billion/year on research. So why do we

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March 23, 2012 1 Comment

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