Good point Martin. Your answer inspired me to have one thought - in the Web of Science you have a lots of ready statistics like citation reports or statistics available via "analyze results" and so on... Maybe this is also an amateur case of bibliometrics?

Hi Magdalena, thought this might be a synonym for Altmetrics. In fact I think it is a broader term to include metrics generated outside the IF / WOS environment. I am not sure, from the perspective of a native English speaker, that the term amateur carries the full intended meaning. Have a look at this slideshare which sets out an ethical and practical framework for the generation of metrics [ https://www.slideshare.net/paulwouters1/issi2013-wg-pw ] "The dos and don'ts in individual level bibliometrics." Puts the term in a better context. Best Wishes. Matt.

Martin and Matt - thank you for your interesting opinions.

Martin - WoS statistics are very nice indeed. However, using only ready-made indicators in the research studies is a case of amateur bibliometrics. I will write about this afterwards.

Matt - I think that examples given by Martin ("no. of downloads", "no. of clicks", "no. of followers") are for altmetrics. Thank you for link to the presentation entitled "The dos and don'ts in individual level bibliometrics" which is full of very good hints.

I have done some research in the literature: 18th STI Conference Proceedings (2013) - available here: http://www.forschungsinfo.de/STI2013/start.asp?proceedingsXXXProceedings

Amateur bibliometrics means "the unreflected use of ready-made indicators

offered by the owners of bibliometric databases". You can find more in the page 120 of the Proceedings. (Please notice that one of the co-authors of this paper is also an author of the presentation which I have mentioned in my question).

Hi Magdalena, now have read the summary I see where your question is coming from. My interpretation is that the quote you use ""the unreflected use of ready-made indicators offered by the owners of bibliometric databases" is a coded reference to the ill informed and indiscriminate use of the Impact Factor, discussion of which is infused through questions and answers on ResearchGate, and has broken out in the mainstream with the DORA Declaration [ http://am.ascb.org/dora ] and the various statements from Thomson Reuters and Reed Elsevier.

My thought is that there is an opposite to "amateur" which is "professional", and that there is an opportunity to reframe the obscure field of biblometrics to produce well founded, statistical and/or holistic measures which can serve the needs of researchers, the organisations they work for and funders. It is a big ambition! BW Matt

I suggest the following of my papers as reading list.

A.M. Abbas, Bounds and Inequalities Relating h-Index, g-Index, e-Index and Generalized Impact Factor: An Improvement over Existing Models, PLoS ONE, vol. 7, no. 4, e33699. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0033699, April 4, 2012.

A.M. Abbas, Weighted Indices for Evaluating the Quality of Research with Multiple Authorship, Scientometrics, vol. 88, no. 1, pp. 107-131, July 2011.

Thank you all for your important point of view. Ash Abbas - thank you for the list of your publications - I will read them asap.

I have almost finished my paper about the European Summer School for Scientometrics 2013. In the introduction I am trying to explain the importance of education in sciento- and bibliometrics. I think that education in this field is significant, and one of the reasons is increasing amateur bibliometrics as J. Glaser has noted in his presentation.

Dear Magdalena,

I'm sorry for having picked this up too late. Since I apparently coined th term, just let me confirm that you are absolutely right. We mean non-bibliometricians doing bibliometrics, and inevitably getting it wrong (using ready-made indicators, uing raw data that are not cleaned and not field-normalised). See

Gläser, Jochen/Grit Laudel, 2007: The social construction of bibliometric methods. In: Richard Whitley und Jochen Gläser (Hg), The Changing Governance of the Sciences: The Advent of Research Evaluation Systems (Yearbook Sociology of the Sciences), Dordrecht: Springer, 101-123.

Dear Jochen,

Thank you for your reply. Your voice in the discussion is priceless.

I was interested in this term when I was writing an article about the ESSS. Paper has been published in Nov. 2013. I have cited your presentation in it.

In the Polish-language literature in the field of biblio-, informetrics we do have a description of this phenomenon. However, no one has called it "amateur bibliometrics" so far. Yes, apparently you coinded the term :-)

All the best,

M.