BIBLIOMETRICS AND THE REF:WHAT DO RESEARCHERS WANT OR NEED FOR THE FUTURE?

Tim Wales, Associate Director (E-Strategy)Royal Holloway, University of London

13th November 2009

BRIEF BIOPro A&I

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University College London

King’s College London(former Pharmacy Library)

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Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/25552808@N04/2847690523/

City University

London Business School

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http://www.flickr.com/photos/dannybull/4017080101/

Open University

Trinity College, Bridgeford University

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Royal Holloway, University of London

REF (BIBLIOMETRIC) UPDATE

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Red card to bibliometrics?

HEFCE Pilot exercise 2008-09 concluded:“...citation information is not sufficiently robust

to be used formulaically or as a primary indicator of quality, but there is consider scope for it to inform and enhance the process of peer review.”

HEFCE Pilot exercise 2008-09 concluded:“...citation information is not sufficiently robust

to be used formulaically or as a primary indicator of quality, but there is consider scope for it to inform and enhance the process of peer review.”

Source: HEFCE (2009b), p.3

More of a yellow card...

Details of citation data use

• Sub-panels decide in advance

• # of citations for each output provided

• With “appropriate benchmarks”

• To “inform and supplement” review

“Robust” citation data UoAs

Medicine Science Engineering

Arts Humanities “others”

Source: HEFCE (2009b), p.3

...with final warning(s)

1. Clear guidelines on using the data robustly to take account of the known limitations and to avoid bias

2. Panels will not make judgements about quality of outputs solely on the basis of citation information; expert information must be applied

3. All submitted outputs will be treated equally, whether or not citation information available

Source: HEFCE (2009b), p.3

1. Clear guidelines on using the data robustly to take account of the known limitations and to avoid bias

2. Panels will not make judgements about quality of outputs solely on the basis of citation information; expert information must be applied

3. All submitted outputs will be treated equally, whether or not citation information available

REF BIBLIOMETRICS PILOT

Methodology

• Thomson Reuters Web of Science and Elsevier Scopus citation data used

• 22 HEIs took part• 35 UoAs from 2008 RAE used

– (Coverage greater than 40% in citation databases)

• Publications between 2001 and 2006 inclusive + citation data to 2007

• 3 data gathering models tested• Journal articles + review papers only

Bibliometric models

1. Publication data by institutional address2. Publication data by staff, all outputs3. Publication data by staff, selected outputs

Model summary

1. Institutional address– Papers assigned to HEIs on basis of author address in

WoS/Scopus– Also assigned to subject categories based on

destination journal

2. Staff, all outputs– All papers by staff submitted to RAE2008 for the

pilot UoAs

3. Staff, selected outputs– 6 most highly cited outputs of staff in 2.

Too ‘burdensome’

Not individual/UoA specific

4

Data gathering issues

a. There were difficulties for some in drawing together data from disparate sources, some of which were not held electronically.

b. Many institutions also found it difficult to comprehensively identify all published research produced by their staff (especially former staff).

c. ...further issues arose due to the need to disambiguate papers written by different people with the same name (especially for larger institutions)

UoA publishing variations

Tend to publish in

conference proceedings?

Source: HEFCE (2009a), p.154

Coverage variations

Source: HEFCE (2009a), p.158(Education 85% not indexed)

WHAT ABOUT RESEARCHERS?

Source: Communicating knowledge, p.17

Journals dominate

Monographs less so

Source: Communicating knowledge, p.18

RAE distorts behaviour

Source: Communicating knowledge, p.34

UK researchers need TLC

• Many researchers are confused by the mixed messages they are receiving as to how best to communicate their findings....

• Funders, learned societies and publishers may also wish to consider whether they might take more of a lead in helping to devise guidelines on good practice [in attribtion & listing of authors]

• Research timescales need to be carefully considered in any arrangements for the assessment of performance.

Source: Communicating knowledge, pp.6-7

RESEARCHERS NEED E-A&IISB research

Power browsers

Source: Tennopir & King, 2008

Printed TOCs,

indices etc

c.75%

Tennopir & King ISB summary

• US scientists increased number of readings (from libraries) via searching & citations

• Broader range of readings thanks to Library subscriptions to online collections

• 80% of articles >10 years found via online searching or citation (links)

• US scientists read many articles for every one that they cite

• Choosing the best article to cite may be subject to peer pressure in the form of choosing more often to cite those that are cited by others.

• Following citation links in e-journal articles may have proportionately more influence on citation behavior than reading behavior

(3 decade analysis)

Digital ISBs

Horizontal information seeking

Viewers

Power browsers

“60% of e-journal users view no more than 3 pages”

“Average time on e-book or e-journal sites: 4-8 mins”

“Power browse horizontally through titles, contents pages and abstracts going for quick wins”

horizontalbouncing

checking

viewing

promiscuous

diverse volatile

Source: CIBER, 2008

Nicholas et al. study

Source: Nicholas et al., 2007

OK, WHAT’S MY POINT?

Given that...

1. The HEFCE Bibliometric pilot found that HEIs had major difficulties in sourcing and providing accurate publication data efficiently

2. There is still a limited need for citation data for REF3. RAE submission trends and external ISB research

indicate an increase in journal article publishing and use across most disciplines

4. Today’s and tomorrow’s researchers value A&I data from libraries to aid power browsing and identifying articles to cite

It follows that...

HEIs and researchers need a REF compliant system that:• contains all of an HEI’s publication data for current and

former staff• Provides citation and benchmarking data for those

UoAs that will be using it in the REF• Harnesses researchers use of Library A&I databases to

good effect• Interfaces with existing bibliographic and web systems,

e.g. OA repository to help promote individual outputs and raise profiles

RESEARCH INFORMATION SYSTEMS(RIS)

The answer?

Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/roadsidepictures/244926428/

RIS@RHUL

Web of SciencePubMed

etc

Research Managers

Institutional Repository

Importing of bibliographic data

Researchers

Validation of bibliographic data

Submission of research artefacts

Depositing research artefacts

Research Management

System

Library staff

Querying of research output data

HEFCE

HR ID Mgt CMS

Querying

RHUL Systems

Submission of bibliographic data

WWW

Updating researchers’ websites

Grants

REF

RIS products...

PURE

CONVERIS

(Develop in-house solutions such as at University College Dublin)

Assisted HEFCE REF Pilot

Standard RIS A&I data ingest

PURE ISI Web of Science * Scopus * PubMed ArXiv.org DBLP Google Books Google Scholar British Library OCLC WorldCat * ZETOC *

Symplectic

ISI Web of Science * Scopus * PubMed ArXiv.org DBLP Google Books Google Scholar British Library OCLC WorldCat * ZETOC *

* = Institutional subscription required

EVENTS DEAR BOY, EVENTS(Harold Macmillan 1894-1986)

2009 Merger

Royal Holloway St George’s Medical School

Merge..err?

PURE V3 SCREENSHOTSRIS example

Researcher’s view

Import A&I data

Author matching

Full-text/OA archiving

Bibliometric reporting

Citation analysis

Conclusion – Long live A&I

A&I services have a new and vital role to play in HEI REF/general research administration thanks to the new market for RIS– Reduce manual ingest of bibliographic data– Sometimes are the only means of identifying past

HEI research– Facilitate output benchmarking thanks to

controlled vocabularies and added-value metadata

“...one of the publishers joked that given the evidence showing the key role of abstracts in today’s crowded information environment, maybe they should reverse their business model and give full-text away and charge for abstracts. They were only half joking.”

Final thought

Source: Nicholas et al. (2007)

A&Iresearch

References & ThanksCIBER (2008) Information behaviour of the researcher of the future. Available

from: http://tinyurl.com/c377rkHEFCE (2009a) Report on the pilot exercise to develop bibliometric indicators

for the Research Excellence Framework. Available from: http://tinyurl.com/yhru5so

HEFCE (2009b) The Research Excellence Framework: A brief guide to the proposals. Available from: http://tinyurl.com/yljnw44

Nicholas, D., Huntingdon, P. & Jamali, H.R. (2007) The Use, Users, and Role of Abstracts in the Digital Scholarly Environment. Journal of Academic Librarianship Vol.33(4),pp.446-453.

RIN (2009) Communicating knowledge: how and why researchers publish their findings. Available from: http://tinyurl.com/ydumxyt

Tennopir, C. & King, D. (2008) Electronic Journals and Changes in Scholarly Article Seeking and Reading Patterns. D-Lib Magazine, Vol.14(11/12). Available from: http://tinyurl.com/5sd3td

Thanks to Adrian Joyce (Business Analyst, RHUL) for RIS materialPURE screenshots (c) copyright Atira A/S 2009

@timwalestim.wales@rhul.ac.uk

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