Quantification 2.0? Bibliometric Infrastructures in Academic Evaluation

Krüger, Anne K.

doi:10.17645/pag.v8i2.2575

Cited by 15 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 42 publications

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“…A quick answer is because in some megadiverse countries, such as Brazil in which most of the fauna remains undescribed, the higher education and scientific organizations evaluation systems have entirely embraced bibliometric indexes (e.g. [29][30][31]). Therefore, these metrics play an important role in the system and, for instance, a Brazil-based author's choice of a scientific journal is largely based on values such as JIF.…”

Section: Zootaxa Phenomenon and Suppression Quarrelmentioning

confidence: 99%

Are publications on zoological taxonomy under attack?

et al. 2021

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Taxonomy is essential to biological sciences and the priority field in face of the biodiversity crisis. The industry of scientific publications has made extensive promotion and display of bibliometric indexes, resulting in side effects such as the Journal Impact Factor™ (JIF) mania. Inadequacies of the widely used indexes to assess taxonomic publications are among the impediments for the progress of this field. Based on an unusually high proportion of self-citations, the mega-journal Zootaxa , focused on zoological taxonomy, was suppressed from the Journal Citation Reports (JCR, Clarivate™). A prompt reaction from the scientific community against this decision took place exposing myths and misuses of bibliometrics. Our goal is to shed light on the impact of misuse of bibliometrics to the production in taxonomy. We explored JCR's metrics for 2010–2018 of 123 zoological journals publishing taxonomic studies. Zootaxa , with around 15 000 citations, received 311% more citations than the second most cited journal, and shows higher levels of self-citations than similar journals. We consider Zootaxa 's scope and the fact that it is a mega-journal are insufficient to explain its high level of self-citation. Instead, this result is related to the ‘ Zootaxa phenomenon', a sociological bias that includes visibility and potentially harmful misconceptions that portray the journal as the only one that publishes taxonomic studies. Menaces to taxonomy come from many sources and the low bibliometric indexes, including JIF, are only one factor among a range of threats. Instead of being focused on statistically illiterate journal metrics endorsing the villainy of policies imposed by profit-motivated companies, taxonomists should be engaged with renewed strength in actions directly connected to the promotion and practice of this science without regard for citation analysis.

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Section: Zootaxa Phenomenon and Suppression Quarrelmentioning

confidence: 99%

Are publications on zoological taxonomy under attack?

et al. 2021

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“…The interviews in turn served to establish which quantification instruments are most salient from a regulatory and managerial perspective, and to certify that no instruments were overlooked. As quantitative data infrastructures presented by (commercial) third parties were found to have a negligible bearing on regulatory and managerial decision making, they are not treated in detail in the analysis (see however Ringel, Brankovic, & Werron, 2020;Krüger, 2020).…”

Section: Research Approachmentioning

confidence: 99%

Keeping One’s Shiny Mercedes in the Garage: Why Higher Education Quantification Never Really Took Off in Germany

Hillebrandt

2020

PaG

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The cybernetic dream of regulatory ‘dashboard control’ has taken off in the German higher education system. Both government regulators and university managers are engaged in the creation of waves of increasingly fine-grained quantitative data. Yet a wide range of recent case studies of the German higher education sector attest that in spite of this ‘datafication’ frenzy, the impact of the collected data mass on regulatory and managerial decision-making capacities seems to have remained relatively limited. This article explores why, in spite of the considerable investment in quantitative data infrastructures in the German higher education sector, this did not result in significant overt analytical capacity building. It explores three hypotheses: 1) a legal hypothesis according to which quantification is curbed by legal protections under the <em>Rechtsstaat</em>; 2) a dysfunctionality hypothesis which holds that decision makers reject quantification as a flawed and impracticable pursuit; and 3) an egalitarian federalism hypothesis which argues that Germany’s federal states seek to prevent commensurability to avoid comparison and competition. The article finds that, in spite of its inconspicuousness, quantification indeed does inform various central decision-making processes. However, different legal, political, and relational factors prompt decision makers to engage in a hybrid, tempered and, overall, untransparent application of numerical data.

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“…One aspect of Espeland and Stevens's diversity-of-numbers argument that's of particular interest to this article concerns the contextualised meaning of numbers. For example, when universities use publication scores to document scholarly productivity (see Krüger, 2020), these scores assume a different meaning when they are applied, e.g., by funders to benchmark resource allocation. The effects of this differentiation of meanings are also investigated by Power (2007).…”

Section: Quantification and Organisational Changementioning

confidence: 99%

Steered by Numbers: How Quantification Differentiates the Reform of a German University

Huber

2020

PaG

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Quantification theories assume that numbers govern and steer a policy field or an organisation. In order to steer successfully, however, the local interpretation of numbers takes centre stage as the meaning of numbers—and thus the way how actors respond to them—varies between systems or sectors. Empirically, this article reviews how a German university makes sense of political numbers and their implicit steering signals, and how quantification alters its organisational structures and reshapes the roles of academics. The article analyses the translation process distinguishing between three levels: the political discourse on university reform; the organisational adaptations; and the effects they have on the professional academic role. The article finds that the university has highly differentiated strategies to respond to the ‘governance by numbers,’ and that it has established independent number-based steering systems. We also find that such differentiation of programmes makes the university management more flexible, helping it deal with anticipated goal conflicts and unwanted allocative effects, but it also places serious strain on—and potentially overburns—the coordination provided by the university’s central administration. We also find that academics have started to align their behavioural strategies towards fulfilling their organisational goals and that they tend to deviate from professional expectations. Discussing these differentiated strategies, this article shows how the differentiation of governance approaches also contributes to the university becoming an ‘organisational actor.’ These preliminary findings suggest the need for and potential direction of further investigations.

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Quantification 2.0? Bibliometric Infrastructures in Academic Evaluation

Cited by 15 publications

References 42 publications

Are publications on zoological taxonomy under attack?

Are publications on zoological taxonomy under attack?

Keeping One’s Shiny Mercedes in the Garage: Why Higher Education Quantification Never Really Took Off in Germany

Steered by Numbers: How Quantification Differentiates the Reform of a German University

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