The Importance of Bibliometric Indicators for the Analysis of Research Performance in Georgia

Abstract

The present analysis of research productivity of scholars in Georgia was motivated by the disadvantageous position of Georgia in international listings of the most cited scientific articles. We used official databases provided by governmental Shota Rustaveli National Scientific Foundation (SRNSF) from 2007 to 2013. In this research we have restricted our analysis by the consideration of bibliometric indicators of the leaders of the awarded projects. Three bibliometric characteristics: the number of publications and citations, as well as H-index of project leaders was obtained from SCOPUS database. According to our results, just 58% of all leaders of awarded projects in SRNSF grant competition, have an article (at least one) in the Scopus database for the entire period of their scholarly activity. From our analysis it follows that the quality of reviewing of the projects, presented to the SRNSF grant competition, does not promote a selection of the most productive project teams; there is no correlation between values of SRNSF reviewer's evaluation scores and the bibliometric data of project leaders in the Scopus database. As a result, in 2007-2012 in spite of large enough (for Georgia) funding, the problem of the low productivity and quality of scientific research in Georgia has not been resolved. We conclude that, in order to improve the situation with the low productivity of research in Georgia, the governmental programs of science support should be based on the new system of evaluation of the quality of presented projects; namely, peer-review approach should be combined with the bibliometric methodology. Besides local interest, for Georgian researchers and governmental authorities, the results of presented research have general importance in the light of ongoing international discussions about the necessity of inclusion of bibliometric data in evaluation procedures of research productivity. Presented results and discussions will be especially helpful for scholars and research administrators from countries in transition and could facilitate in elaboration of effective research funding policy.

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