Evaluative Inquiry IV: Accountability and learning

Do research evaluations serve the purpose of accountability or of learning? We argue that they can do both and that we might as well use the energy and resources it takes to organize evaluations for both accountability and learning opportunities.

Tjitske Holtrop, Laurens Hessels and Ad Prins • November 05, 2020

Incorporating the human factor in the study of universities

University evaluation is done, in part, by evaluating the papers produced by the university. However, universities don’t produce papers, right? People produce papers! In this blogpost we illustrate how you can use the number of papers produced by individuals to evaluate universities.

Juan Pablo Bascur Cifuentes and Rodrigo Costas • October 28, 2020

Who benefits from science? A comment on Barry Bozeman’s ‘Public Value Science’

In a new article for Issues in S&T Barry Bozeman argues that current science policies benefit the rich more than the poor, thus reinforcing social inequalities. This blog post discusses his argument in the light of related views on how science can contribute to wider social well-being.

Ismael Rafols • September 22, 2020 • 1 comment

Where do scholars move? Measuring the mobility of researchers across academic institutions

The mobility of scientific human capital is a key channel for exchanging ideas and disseminating scientific knowledge. In this blog post, we demonstrate how scientometrics can help trace mobility patterns at the institutional level, using the Dimensions database.

Vít Macháček, Márcia R. Ferreira, Nicolás Robinson-García, Martin Srholec and Rodrigo Costas • September 03, 2020

Evaluative Inquiry III: Mixing methods for evaluating research

Critiques on research metrics have produced an unhelpful divide between quantitative and qualitative research methods. In this blogpost, we explain why research evaluation can benefit from the strengths of both.

Tjitske Holtrop, Laurens Hessels and Ad Prins • August 21, 2020

Consensus and dissensus in ‘mappings’ of science for Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

A variety of ‘mappings’ of research on SDGs are being developed. A recent study shows that there are stark disagreements across some of these bibliometric ‘mappings’, raising concerns about their robustness. I argue here that this is due to different interpretations of the science relevant to SDGs.

Ismael Rafols • August 10, 2020

Evaluative Inquiry II: Evaluating research in context

We know that academic knowledge production happens in context, yet, when assessing research, we undervalue the influence of stakeholders and organizational contexts on academic output and impact. The second of four blogposts is on evaluating research in context.

Tjitske Holtrop, Laurens Hessels and Ad Prins • July 20, 2020

COVID-19 research in the news: Visualizing the sentiment and topics in science news about the pandemic

Every day news outlets around the world play a central role in disseminating the latest COVID-19 research. In this post, we discuss the impact of COVID-19 findings on the news by applying state-of-the-art sentiment analysis and present some interesting preliminary results, stay tuned!

Márcia R. Ferreira, Bijan Ranjbar-Sahraei and Rodrigo Costas • July 06, 2020

Evaluative Inquiry I: Academic value is more than performance

Mainstream evaluation metrics tend to understand academic value as performance while missing other valuable elements of academic value trajectories. This first of four blogposts focuses on the concept of value of the Evaluative Inquiry’s approach to research evaluation.

Tjitske Holtrop, Laurens Hessels and Ad Prins • June 25, 2020

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