For example, considering number of publications if a given topic per number of research groups in that field, it would be a valid indicator of productivity.
Measuring scientific productivity is always a challenge, and ideally one should know the ultimate purpose of such a measurement, as different purposes require different approaches to defining the scientific productivity.
I don't think a number of publications *per se* is a valid indicator. One should also take into account at least the number of citations and the quality of the journals where the papers in question were published (the quality of journals is to some extent related to but should not be identified with the impact factor).
Thank you Artur. I agree with you. The ultimate purpose of bibliometrics would be oriented at quantifying scientific productivity, also by means of indicators which could be easily reproducible and comparable in diferent contexts. This would not always seem so easy as data availability might not be the same.
However, the quantification of research capabilities such as number of investigators or research groups in a given community might be useful for analyzing scientific productivity, in addition to data provided by scientific publications. This would help at identifying if efforts should be directed at increasing research workforce.
Any ideas on some interesting and reproducible indicators of research workforce for use in scientometrics?
How about leadership and scientific excellence as a group indicators? Maybe these articles related to the issue can be useful:
Moya-Anegón, F., Guerrero-Bote, V., Bortmann, L. &Moed, H. (2013).The research guarantors of scientific papers and the output counting: a promising new approach. Scientometrics, 97, 421-434.
Bornmann, L., Moya-Anegón, F. &Leydesdorff, L. (2012). The new Excellence Indicator in the World Report of the SCImago Institutions Rankings 2011. Journal of Informetrics, 6(2), 333-335.
I think that the term "research productivity" is a misleading term. On the face it means, how many papers did the scholar or group of scholars generate. This is not a very meaningful statistic since it is easy to generate papers but most of them will never be read or cited and thus have no impact.
A better approach would be to try to get to the "research impact" or how the research produced by a scholar or group changed or influenced the field. A good set of metrics for this purpose is the Hirsch family of indices which provides a profile of measures by which you can assess a scholar or group's influence (Hirsch, 2005; Sidiropoulos, et al, 2006; Egghe, 2006; Molinari and Molinari, 2008).
Hirsch, J. E. (2005). An index to quantify an individual's scientific research output. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 102(46), 16569-16572.
Egghe, L. (2006). Theory and practice of the g-index. Scientometrics, 69(1), 131-152.
Molinari, J.-F., & Molinari, A. (2008). A new methodology for ranking scientific institutions. Scientometrics, 75(1), 163-174.
Sidiropoulos, A., Katsaros, D., & Manolopoulos, Y. (2006). Generalized h-index for Disclosing Latent Facts in Citation Networks. arXiv:cs.DL/o606066, 1.
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