Science policy framed by audit culture relies heavily on performance measurement. This changing research environment affects higher education institutions and their scientific libraries. As service providers for research and teaching libraries need to demonstrate their added-value in front of various stakeholders. Some Library and Information Science (LIS) scholars and practitioners thus promot...

The study of the statistical regularities observed in the field of information production and use has confirmed the existence of important similarities. Thus, the existence of regularities and measurable ratios allow the prevision and the concept of laws. In the 1950s, Shannon and Weaver [13] modelled the information circulation theory. The entropy hypothesis of this theory is that the more ran...

Evaluating the scientific output of researchers, research institutions, academic departments and even universities is a challenging issue. To do this, bibliometric indicators are helpful tools, more and more familiar to research and governmental institutions. This paper proposes a structured method to compare academic research groups within the same discipline, by means of some Hirsch (h) based...

For more than 40 years, the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI, now part of Thomson Reuters) produced the only available bibliographic databases from which bibliometricians could compile largescale bibliometric indicators. ISI’s citation indexes, now regrouped under the Web of Science (WoS), were the major sources of bibliometric data until 2004, when Scopus was launched by the publisher...

During recent years, bibliometric studies have become increasingly important in evaluating individual scientists, institutes, and entire observatories. In astronomy, often librarians are involved in maintaining publication databases and compiling statistics for their institutions. In this paper, we present a look behind the scenes to understand who is interested in bibliometric statistics, whic...

In this article a relational database schema for a bibliometric database is developed. After the introduction explaining the motivation to use relational databases in bibliometrics, an overview of the related literature is given. A review of typical bibliometric questions serves as an informal requirement analysis. The database schema is developed as an entity-relationship diagram using the str...

CONTEXT During the past 20 years, colleges of osteopathic medicine (COMs) have made several advances in research that have substantially improved the osteopathic medical profession and the health of the US population. Furthering the understanding of research at COMs, particularly the factors influencing the attainment of extramural funds, is highly warranted and coincides with the missions of m...

Background: Integrative health care (IHC) has become a popular term used in practice and research to define the blending of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) and conventional care as an innovative approach to health care delivery. Purpose and objectives: To conduct a bibliometric analysis to develop a better understanding of the evolution of the concept of IHC in the CAM field. Metho...

In December 2003, seventeen years after the first UK research assessment exercise, Italy started up its first-ever national research evaluation, with the aim to evaluate, using the peer review method, the excellence of the national research production. The evaluation involved 20 disciplinary areas, 102 research structures, 18,500 research products and 6,661 peer reviewers (1,465 from abroad); i...

This article discusses the potential consequences of implementing bibliometrics as an institutionalized practice in academic libraries. Results are reported from a survey distributed among academic libraries in Sweden with organized bibliometric activities. Incorporating bibliometric activities is seen as a way of redefining and widening of the role of the library. Implementation of bibliometri...