The measurement of scientific activity: Research directions in linking philosophy of science and metrics of science and technology outputs

Abstract

The application of the measurement of scientific and technical activities has been a lengthy process of the appropriate metrics and the assignment of the standards and benchmarks for their usage. Although some studies have addressed issues of the management of science and technology and their relation to scientometrics and infometrics, there is nevertheless a need to consider the linkages between the conceptual background of scientific generation and progress -and the measurement of its process and outcomes.This paper first reviews the three main approaches to the generation and progress of human knowledge in general and scientific activity in particular. These approaches are reviewed in terms of the demands they would make on the measurement of scientific process and outputs. The paper then examines the currently used categories of metrics, and arrives at several conclusions.The paper provides an analysis of these conclusions and their implications to the generation and utilization of metrics of science and its outcomes. The review of the conceptual or philosophical foundations for the measurement of science offers an in-depth examination, resulting in the correlation of these foundations with the metrics we now use to measure science and its outcomes. The paper suggests research directions for a much needed link between theories of science and knowledge, and the application of metrics used to measure them. Finally, the paper offers several hypotheses and proposes potential empirical studies.

Brazilian knowledge production in the field of child and adolescent health

“…Entretanto, a falta de um esquema de consenso para medir os resultados técnicos e científicos sob um esquema conceitual razoável levou a um leque díspar de indicadores. Deste modo, na prática, a assim chamada cientometria é muitas vezes realizada somente com o uso da bibliometria, que é a medida de publicações científicas, mesmo que além dela não existam relações sistemáticas com outras categorias de medida de ciência e tecnologia 3 . A bibliometria baseia-se no conceito de que a qualidade de periódicos e artigos pode ser inferida pela hierarquização da produção científica, construída por meio de técnicas quantitativas que fornecem certos índices 4 .…”

Scientometric definition of science: In what respect is the humanities more scientific than mathematical and social sciences?

“…A few scientometric studies are available for the philosophy of science [GEISLER, 2005] and mathematical logic [WAGNER-DÖBLER, 1997], the latter of which is the core in the philosophy of science. But they are not for the definition of science.…”

The discovery of cumulative knowledge

“…Within the academic community, a common measure of impact is citations (in spite of problems with this metric, 5 Seglen, 1997). The use of citations as a measure of research impact, however, is implicitly based on a model of cumulative science (or "normal" science in a Kuhnian sense) in which earlier papers that establish key research questions, methods, theories or results are cited by other researchers to position their work within a field (Geisler, 2005). If a field is not cumulative in this sense, then how do we measure the impact of that work?…”