09 Dic. 2015 - Marco Pautasso

A short introduction to scientometrics

Presenta: Marco Pautasso

Animal & Plant Health Unit, EFSA, Parma, Italy

Scientometricapproaches, i.e. measuring and mapping scientific activities and outputs, are increasingly used to e.g. (i) track the temporal and spatial development of research fields and topics, (ii) assess the productivity and impact of researchers and research institutions, as well as (iii) study patterns in gender balance in academia, interdisciplinarity, and peer review processes. In this brief overview, I present some examples of scientometric approaches, focusing on biodiversity science and research on forest health. Most often, scientometric studies document an increase through time in absolute publication numbers (which is not surprising), but more interesting results can be obtained by studying the temporal variation of publication numbers relative to the overall output in a particular area. For example, it was shown that the proportion of papers mentioning fungi in the marine literature has been increasing over the last two decades, whereas no trend was observed for the proportion of papers mentioning fungi in the freshwater literature. Similar approaches can be used to explore public interest in science (e.g. using altmetrics and Google Trends), as well as media attention to certain scientific topics. A word of caution is needed: not everything that can be measured counts, and not everything that counts can be measured. As with all tools, scientometric indicators can be used poorly (e.g., to evaluate researchers uncritically) or smartly (e.g., to help rebalance scientific attention to a larger suite of potentially emerging threats to tree health under changing environmental conditions, instead of just financing research on a few emerging diseases such as Phytophthoraramorum, ash dieback and Xylellafastidiosa).

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