Recently a very respected and prolific author from my instituition has passed away. Now, a professor has approached me about creating some kind of academic research to honor the author's legacy on the scientific world and evaluate his impact in it. Furthermore, we would probably try to publish the research in a journal said author was well recognized.
I know this is probably unorthodox, but do you think a bibliometric analysis about someone's scientific contributions would be adequate?
It depends on what you want to achieve. Bibliometric analyses of the oeuvres of individual authors have been published before. The scientific contribution of such an analysis is limited but it might be interesting to readers. I am not sure how far one can go with impact assessment - this is always problematic at the individual level. Validity depends on the kind of generalised statement you want to make on the basis of the analysis, and I would not want to do this anyway.
Kalyane, V. L. and S. S. Munnolli (1995). "Scientometric Portrait of West,T.S." Scientometrics 33(2): 233-256.
We do individual-level bibliometrics to reconstruct intellectual biographies but use this only as input for interviews with researchers.
Gläser, J. and G. Laudel (2015). "A Bibliometric Reconstruction of Research Trails for Qualitative Investigations of Scientific Innovations." Historical Social Research / Historische Sozialforschung 40(3): 299-330.
It depends on what you want to achieve. Bibliometric analyses of the oeuvres of individual authors have been published before. The scientific contribution of such an analysis is limited but it might be interesting to readers. I am not sure how far one can go with impact assessment - this is always problematic at the individual level. Validity depends on the kind of generalised statement you want to make on the basis of the analysis, and I would not want to do this anyway.
Kalyane, V. L. and S. S. Munnolli (1995). "Scientometric Portrait of West,T.S." Scientometrics 33(2): 233-256.
We do individual-level bibliometrics to reconstruct intellectual biographies but use this only as input for interviews with researchers.
Gläser, J. and G. Laudel (2015). "A Bibliometric Reconstruction of Research Trails for Qualitative Investigations of Scientific Innovations." Historical Social Research / Historische Sozialforschung 40(3): 299-330.
Originally, bibliometric tools were developed for studies of scientific fields, not for analyzing the scientific impact of individuals. For an individual, there is always a large statistical uncertainty. However, you may use the bibliometric data in addition to a review of your colleague's scientific work.
Thank you Dr. Wolfgang R. Dick and Professor Jochen Glaser. We are now more set on making a review of the subject's work with bibliometric data for illustration, as the main objective is really to honor the subject.
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