AG Bibliometrics

Repercussions of Open Access on Research Assessment (ROARA)

Project description

The scholarly publication is central to how research is assessed and evaluated; changes to the academic publishing system therefore immediately affect the research assessment system. Open access (OA) policies and mandates introduce drastic changes to traditional publishing and the academic community and publishers have reacted with different strategies. While publishers develop new business models to increase profits, researchers strive to increase publication counts in a ‘publish or perish’ culture. Against this background, recent calls to reform research assessment aim to refocus on research quality over quantity. Publishers and researchers may clash when their economic and scientific orientations interfere. When academic careers and profitable businesses are at stake, questionable publication practices unfold. The proposed project will analyze research assessment systems in the context of recent OA policies using multiple mixed methods. By focusing on the intertwined relationships between publishing and research evaluation, it will provide empirical evidence about the interplay of economic strategies and motivations to advance knowledge and academic careers. Effects on research assessment systems will be investigated in the context of OA, identifying potential clashes and dysfunctionalities. Results are expected to be highly relevant to all stakeholders in science policy, scholarly communication and research assessment.

 

Project staff: Dr. Quoc-Tan Tran (quoc-tan.tran@uni-bielefeld.de)

 

Funded by Volkswagenstiftung

 

Institutional Coding 2025

Project Description

Since the foundation of the Competence Centre for Bibliometrics, the Bibliometrics Working Group at Bielefeld University has been providing a coding system for institutions that attributes German address data from the Web of Science and Scopus to existing research institutions. This procedure is based on text patterns and considers structural changes in the institutional landscape over time, representing them in the data structure provided to all partners of the Competence Network for Bibliometrics (KB). To prevent obsolescence, continuous efforts for quality improvement are necessary. In addition to address coding, country information is also coded, attributing the country field data (e.g., 'Germany') in the Web of Science and Scopus raw data to the appropriate ISO code (e.g., DEU).

The aim of the project is to continuously provide institutional coding for both databases. During this one-year period, four codings will be compiled and provided to all partners of the Competence Network Bibliometrics within the shared database infrastructure. In addition to compiling the eight codings, the regular expression text patterns will be adapted to changes in the German institutional landscape and to the requirements of incoming address data from the database providers. Moreover, the performance of the institutional coding procedure will be enhanced by optimizing and merging the text patterns used for attributing address information. As a service for the members of the Competence Network, users of the institutional coding will be supported, corrections based on user-reported errors will be made, and partner requests for quality improvements of the institutional coding will be implemented.

Project staff: Christopher Lenke (christopher.lenke@uni-bielefeld.de)

OpenBIB 2025

Project description

The goal of the project is to continue developing an open bibliometric database within the Competence Network for Bibliometrics, based on OpenAlex, with a focus on publications from Germany. This will enable science and higher education research to reduce dependence on proprietary database providers by offering open alternatives in line with the principles of open science, and to unlock the independent analytical potential of freely accessible bibliometric databases.

While the initial phase of the project focused on preliminary data analyses and foundational work, the current phase aims to implement and deploy automated procedures for the continuous provision of open bibliometric data based on OpenAlex.

In the area of address information, the goal for 2025 is to establish the conditions for the routine use of institutional coding for German address data. For this purpose, the institutional coding will be adapted to the specific characteristics of OpenAlex address data, and codings of OpenAlex address information will be produced on a quarterly basis.

Project staff:

Christopher Lenke (christopher.lenke@uni-bielefeld.de)

Links:

• Institutional coding procedures: https://pub.uni-bielefeld.de/record/2999367
• OpenBIB dataset: Selected curated open metadata based on OpenAlex

 

Project Partners / Consortium Partners

• Lower Saxony State and University Library Göttingen, Georg August University of Göttingen
• German Centre for Higher Education Research and Science Studies
• Jülich Research Centre Ltd., Central Library
• GESIS – Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences
• Bibliometrics Working Group, Bielefeld University