Integrating metrics to measure research performance in social sciences and humanities: The case of the Spanish CSIC

Abstract

Knowledge dissemination in the social sciences and humanities (SSH) is characterized by an assorted set of publication channels and a more prevalent use of local languages, so international bibliographic databases do not provide a practical study source by themselves. This paper aims at laying the foundations for a comprehensive study of the research performance of SSH CSIC researchers from a micro-level perspective. Both the WoS and an internal CSIC database ('ConCiencia') are used in combination with a set of indicators describing the activity profile of researchers and the prestige of publication channels. Differences between the publication patterns of researchers in both domains are examined and so is the relationship between their research performance and their personal features. For researchers in humanities, the higher their academic rank and age the greater their activity in books and non-WoS articles was found to be; whereas for those working in the social sciences fields, a higher academic rank does not prefigure whether a researcher's scientific activity is more likely to be national or international in scope. Finally, a series of recommendations to consider output beyond the boundaries of WoS articles, and develop more accurate indicators for assessing the prestige of publications channels is expounded.

Using Almetrics for Contextualised Mapping of Societal Impact: From Hits to Networks

“…We believe that these mapping and contextual approaches to altmetrics can be particularly relevant for exploring the impacts (both academic and societal) of the social sciences and the humanities. These are scholarly areas which are very badly covered by scientific databases and societal impact indicators, because non-standard publications (Díaz-Faes et al 2016) and informal interactions regarding socioeconomic and cultural issues are more common than in other fields (Olmos et al 2013). Another issue of special interest is the use of these approaches to explore the engagement of researchers with local or global peers or stakeholders, an issue that is hotly debated in countries in the 'scientific peripheries' with pressure to publish internationally (Piñeiro & Hicks 2015;Chavarro et al 2017).…”

Open Access Routes Dichotomy and Opportunities: Consolidation, Analysis and Trends at the Spanish National Research Council

“…Same case here for journals in languages other than English. An extensive bibliography acknowledges these limitations [15]. • Inside GesBIB, information is processed and enriched following this iterative process:…”

The transformative power of values-enacted scholarship

“…Given the perverse incentives enabled by current mechanisms of evaluation in higher education, is it any surprise that scholars act in self-serving ways: they treat graduate students with disdain (K. J. Baker, 2018;Braxton et al, 2011;Noy and Ray, 2012), steal each other's ideas (Bouville, 2008;Douglas, 1992;Grossberg, 2004;Hansson, 2008;Lawrence, 2002;Martin, 1997;Resnik, 2012), engage in citation gaming practices (Baccini et al, 2019; Cronin, 2014; Gruber, 2014; Rouhi, 2017; Sabaratnam and Kirby, 2014) such as "citation cartels" (Franck, 1999;Onbekend et al, 2016) or even outright citation malpractice (Davenport and Snyder, 1995), cite only those with whom they agree (Hojat et al, 2003;Mahoney, 1977), insist that their Ph.D. students cite them in every work (Hüppauf, 2018;Sugimoto, 2014), require undergraduates buy their $200 book, 4 manipulate images to better suit their argument (Clark, 2013;Cromey, 2010;Jordan, 2014), manipulate p-values (Gelman and Loken, 2013;Head et al, 2015;Wicherts et al, 2016), 5 denigrate competitors' research in peer review (Balietti et al, 2016;Lee and Schunn, 2011;Mahoney, 1977;Mallard et al, 2009;Penders, 2018;Rouhi, 2017)-or openly ridicule earnest peer review of what turn out to be hoax papers (Mounk et al, 2018;Schliesser, 2018;White, 2004)-or change their research to suit the metrics, as Aagaard et al (2015) and Díaz-Faes et al (2016) and many others …”