In Defense of Merit to Overcome Merit

Bibliometric indicators such as the number of published articles and citations received are subject to a strong ambiguity. A high numerical value of bibliometric indicators may not measure the quality of scientific production, but only a high level of activity of a researcher. There may be cases of good researchers who do not produce a high number of articles, but have few research products of high quality. The sociology of science relies on the so-called “Matthew effect,” which is inspired by Matthew’s Gospel on Talents. “Those that have more will have more” seems to support the idea that those that publish more, merit to have higher bibliometric indicators, and to be recognized for their major results. But is this really the case? Can bibliometric indicators be considered a measure of the merit of scholars or they come from luck and chance? The answer is of fundamental importance to identify best practices in research assessment. In this work, using philosophical argumentation, we show how Christian theology, in particular St. Thomas Aquinas, can help us to clarify the concept of merit, overcoming the conceptual ambiguities and problems highlighted by the existing literature. By doing this, Christian theology, will allow us to introduce the evaluation framework in a broader perspective better suited to the interpretation of the complexity of research evaluation.