CHELPS Dialogue: Does the Use of Bibliometrics Corrupt Research & Publications in Higher Education?

On May 14, 2024 CHELPS held a Policy Dialogue on the theme: Is the use of bibliometrics by universities to evaluate the performance of academics corrupting research and publication?

The Dialogue panel was chaired by Dr. Ewan Wright (EdUHK) and included Drs. Hugo Horta (HKU), Yusuf Oldac (Lingnan University), and Ji Ying (EdUHK).

Abstract

In recent years #bibliometrics have become increasingly influential in informing the way that universities, especially in Hong Kong and some other parts of #EastAsia, make hiring and promotion decisions as a shorthand proxy means of measuring and comparing the performance of academics. Bibliometrics such as citation counts, the h-index, and the journal impact factor (JIF), provide a quantitative measure of the impact of #academic publications. Citations are used in the University of Stanford’s World’s Most Cited Scientists poll. Journals use a number of strategies to boost their JIF such as proliferating special issues and only reviewing papers that include citations to the journal. Meanwhile, academics are advised by their universities to only publish in #high-impact #journals. Academics looking to get promoted use strategies to raise their h-index including co-authorship with more established #scholars while others working in emerging but important areas of research and scholarship tend to gain fewer #citations for their publications. Is the use of bibliometrics a legitimate way of judging the comparative merit of academic work or should universities sign up to the Declaration on Research Assessment (or ‘DORA’ see https://sfdora.org/), that rejects the use of proxy measurements, such as the JIF, in evaluating academic research performance?