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A fairer way to compare researchers at any career stage and in any discipline using open-access citation data
The pursuit of simple, yet fair, unbiased, and objective measures of researcher performance has occupied bibliometricians and the research community as a whole for decades. However, despite the diversity of available metrics, most are either complex to calculate or not readily applied in the most co...
Autores principales: | , , , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Public Library of Science
2021
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8432834/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34506560 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0257141 |
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author | Bradshaw, Corey J. A. Chalker, Justin M. Crabtree, Stefani A. Eijkelkamp, Bart A. Long, John A. Smith, Justine R. Trinajstic, Kate Weisbecker, Vera |
author_facet | Bradshaw, Corey J. A. Chalker, Justin M. Crabtree, Stefani A. Eijkelkamp, Bart A. Long, John A. Smith, Justine R. Trinajstic, Kate Weisbecker, Vera |
author_sort | Bradshaw, Corey J. A. |
collection | PubMed |
description | The pursuit of simple, yet fair, unbiased, and objective measures of researcher performance has occupied bibliometricians and the research community as a whole for decades. However, despite the diversity of available metrics, most are either complex to calculate or not readily applied in the most common assessment exercises (e.g., grant assessment, job applications). The ubiquity of metrics like the h-index (h papers with at least h citations) and its time-corrected variant, the m-quotient (h-index ÷ number of years publishing) therefore reflect the ease of use rather than their capacity to differentiate researchers fairly among disciplines, career stage, or gender. We address this problem here by defining an easily calculated index based on publicly available citation data (Google Scholar) that corrects for most biases and allows assessors to compare researchers at any stage of their career and from any discipline on the same scale. Our ε′-index violates fewer statistical assumptions relative to other metrics when comparing groups of researchers, and can be easily modified to remove inherent gender biases in citation data. We demonstrate the utility of the ε′-index using a sample of 480 researchers with Google Scholar profiles, stratified evenly into eight disciplines (archaeology, chemistry, ecology, evolution and development, geology, microbiology, ophthalmology, palaeontology), three career stages (early, mid-, late-career), and two genders. We advocate the use of the ε′-index whenever assessors must compare research performance among researchers of different backgrounds, but emphasize that no single index should be used exclusively to rank researcher capability. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-8432834 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2021 |
publisher | Public Library of Science |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-84328342021-09-11 A fairer way to compare researchers at any career stage and in any discipline using open-access citation data Bradshaw, Corey J. A. Chalker, Justin M. Crabtree, Stefani A. Eijkelkamp, Bart A. Long, John A. Smith, Justine R. Trinajstic, Kate Weisbecker, Vera PLoS One Research Article The pursuit of simple, yet fair, unbiased, and objective measures of researcher performance has occupied bibliometricians and the research community as a whole for decades. However, despite the diversity of available metrics, most are either complex to calculate or not readily applied in the most common assessment exercises (e.g., grant assessment, job applications). The ubiquity of metrics like the h-index (h papers with at least h citations) and its time-corrected variant, the m-quotient (h-index ÷ number of years publishing) therefore reflect the ease of use rather than their capacity to differentiate researchers fairly among disciplines, career stage, or gender. We address this problem here by defining an easily calculated index based on publicly available citation data (Google Scholar) that corrects for most biases and allows assessors to compare researchers at any stage of their career and from any discipline on the same scale. Our ε′-index violates fewer statistical assumptions relative to other metrics when comparing groups of researchers, and can be easily modified to remove inherent gender biases in citation data. We demonstrate the utility of the ε′-index using a sample of 480 researchers with Google Scholar profiles, stratified evenly into eight disciplines (archaeology, chemistry, ecology, evolution and development, geology, microbiology, ophthalmology, palaeontology), three career stages (early, mid-, late-career), and two genders. We advocate the use of the ε′-index whenever assessors must compare research performance among researchers of different backgrounds, but emphasize that no single index should be used exclusively to rank researcher capability. Public Library of Science 2021-09-10 /pmc/articles/PMC8432834/ /pubmed/34506560 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0257141 Text en © 2021 Bradshaw et al https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Bradshaw, Corey J. A. Chalker, Justin M. Crabtree, Stefani A. Eijkelkamp, Bart A. Long, John A. Smith, Justine R. Trinajstic, Kate Weisbecker, Vera A fairer way to compare researchers at any career stage and in any discipline using open-access citation data |
title | A fairer way to compare researchers at any career stage and in any discipline using open-access citation data |
title_full | A fairer way to compare researchers at any career stage and in any discipline using open-access citation data |
title_fullStr | A fairer way to compare researchers at any career stage and in any discipline using open-access citation data |
title_full_unstemmed | A fairer way to compare researchers at any career stage and in any discipline using open-access citation data |
title_short | A fairer way to compare researchers at any career stage and in any discipline using open-access citation data |
title_sort | fairer way to compare researchers at any career stage and in any discipline using open-access citation data |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8432834/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34506560 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0257141 |
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