Measuring Research: What Everyone Needs to Know®

by Cassidy R. Sugimoto

Policy makers, academic administrators, scholars, and members of the public are clamoring for indicators of the value and reach of research. The question of how to quantify the impact and importance of research and scholarly output, from the publication of books and journal articles to the indexing of citations and tweets, is a critical one in predicting innovation, and in deciding what sorts of research is supported and whom is hired to carry it out.

There is a wide set of data and tools available for measuring research, but they are often used in crude ways, and each have their own limitations and internal logics. Measuring What Everyone Needs to Know ® will provide, for the first time, an accessible account of the methods used to gather and analyze data on research output and impact. Following a brief history of scholarly communication and its measurement -- from traditional peer review to crowdsourced review on the social web -- the book will look at the classification of knowledge and academic disciplines, the differences between citations and references, the role of peer review, national research evaluation exercises, the tools used to measure research, the many different types of measurement indicators, and how to measure interdisciplinarity. The book also addresses emerging issues within scholarly communication, including whether or not measurement promotes a "publish or perish" culture, fraud in research, or
"citation cartels." It will also look at the stakeholders behind these analytical tools, the adverse effects of these quantifications, and the future of research measurement.

Genres: Nonfiction, Professional Development

164 pages, Hardcover

Published January 2, 2018

About the author

Cassidy R. Sugimoto is Associate Professor in the School of Informatics and Computing at Indiana University Bloomington and the coeditor of Beyond Bibliometrics (MIT Press).

Reviews

[Özgür · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bibliometrics in a nutshell.

[Cinjon · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a good review of the space. Acts as reference material.

[Simon Linacre · Rating 3 out of 5]

Does a good job of explaining academic publishing metrics, but not as comprehensive or as critical as one would have liked

[Cat · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book provides the big picture of how research output is measured. It really helped me understand the limitations of indicators such as the h-index. Overall, their descriptions were very clear, and focus on the historical development of indicators, descriptions of the indicators themselves, and critique.