New Book: 'Citation Analysis in Research Evaluation' by Henk F. Moed

Tue Aug 16 05:31:12 EDT 2005

It is a great pleasure to announce the publication of my monograph

'Citation Analysis in Research Evaluation' (Springer, 2005. 350 pp.
ISBN: 1-4020-3713-9).

Please find below a summary presenting its main lines and the table of
contents. For further information I refer to the CWTS website
(www.cwts.nl) and to www.springeronline.com/1-4020-3713-9

Henk F. Moed

Centre for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS)

Leiden University, the Netherlands

Email: moed at cwts.leidenuniv.nl

Citation Analysis in Research Evaluation. By Henk. F. Moed

Springer, 2005. 350 pp. ISBN: 1-4020-3713-9.

This book is written for members of the scholarly research community,
and for persons involved in research evaluation and research policy.
More specifically, it is directed towards the following four main groups
of readers:

- All scientists and scholars who have been or will be subjected to a
quantitative assessment of research performance using citation analysis.

- Research policy makers and managers who wish to become conversant with
the basic features of citation analysis, and about its potentialities
and limitations.

- Members of peer review committees and other evaluators, who consider
the use of citation analysis as a tool in their assessments.

- Practitioners and students in the field of quantitative science and
technology studies, informetrics, and library and information science.

It deals with the evaluation of scholarly research performance, and
focuses on the contribution of scholarly work to the advancement of
scholarly knowledge. Its principal question is: how can citation
analysis be used properly as a tool in the assessment of such a
contribution?

Citation analysis involves the construction and application of a series
of indicators of the 'impact', 'influence' or 'quality' of scholarly
work, derived from references cited in footnotes or bibliographies of
scholarly research publications. It describes primarily the use of data
extracted from the Science Citation Index and the Web of Science,
published by the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI)/Thomson
Scientific. But many aspects to which this book dedicates attention
relate to citation analysis in general.

It provides a wide range of important facts, and corrects a number of
common misunderstandings about citation analysis. It introduces basic
notions and distinctions, and deals both with theoretical and technical
aspects, and with its applicability in various policy contexts, at the
level of individual scholars, research groups, departments,
institutions, national scholarly systems, disciplines or subfields, and
scholarly journals.  Although the major part of the analysis relates to
the basic science - a domain in which citation analysis is used most
frequently - this book also addresses its uses and limits in the applied
and technical sciences, social sciences and humanities.

It reveals the enormous potential of quantitative, bibliometric analyses
of the scholarly literature for a deeper understanding of scholarly
activity and performance, and highlights their policy relevance. But
this book is also critical, underlines the limits of citation analysis
in research evaluation, and issues warnings for potential misuse. It
proposes criteria for proper use of citation analysis as a research
evaluation tool.  In order to be used properly as a research evaluation
tool, it is essential that all participants have insight into the nature
of citation analysis, how its indicators are constructed and calculated,
what the various theoretical positions state about what they measure,
and what are their potentialities and limitations, particularly in
relation to peer review. This book aims at providing such insight.

Table of Contents

Preface   ix

Executive Summary   1

Part 1   General Introduction and Main Conclusions   9

1   General Introduction   11

2   Basic Notions and General Conclusions   25

3   Synopsis   35

Part 2   Empirical and Theoretical Chapters   69

Part 2.1   Assessing Basic Science Research Departments and

Scientific Journals 69

4   Citation Analysis of Basic Science Research Departments   71

5   Citation Analysis of Scientific Journals 91

Part 2.2   The ISI Citation Indexes   107

6   Basic Principles, Citation Links and Terminology   109

7   ISI Coverage by Discipline   119

8   Implications for the Use of the ISI Citation Indexes in Research
Evaluation   137

Part 2.3   Assessing Social Sciences and Humanities   145

9   Differences between Science, Social Sciences and Humanities   147

10   Expanded Citation Analysis: A Case Study in Economics   153

11   A Case Study of Research Performance in Law   159

Part 2.4   Accuracy Aspects   167

12   Introductory Notes on Accuracy Issues   169

13   Accuracy of Citation Counts   173

14   Problems with the Names of Authors and Institutions, and with

  the Delimitation of Subfields   181

Part 2.5   Theoretical Aspects   191

15   What Do References and Citations Measure?   193

16   Towards a Theory of Citation: Some Building Blocks   209

17   Implications for the Use of Citation Analysis in Research

Evaluation   221

Part 2.6   Citation Analysis and Peer Review   227

18   Peer Review and the Use and Validity of Citation Analysis   229

19   Analysis of Peer Assessments of Research Departments   239

20   Analysis of a National Research Council   247

Part 2.7   Macro Studies   259

21   Did Global Scientific Publication Productivity Increase during

the 1980s and 1990s?   261

22   Measuring Trends in National Publication Output   271

23   Does International Scientific Collaboration Pay?   285

24   Do US Scientists Overcite Papers from their Own Country?   291

Part 2.8   New Developments   301

25   Development of New Indicators   303

26   Electronic Publishing, New Databases and Search Engines   313

27   Further Research   319

References   323

Index of Keywords, Cited Works and Cited Authors 337