a project funded by swissuniversities
The Impact Factor is Big Business Aside from the infamous H-Index (which “quantifies” researchers), the most widely known concept from scientometrics is the Impact Factor (IF), which “quantifies” journals. Currently owned by Clarivate, the Journal Impact FactorTM is both a brand and a big business. Many copycats have tried to compete with the IF, but … Read more
The third SYoS lecture on “The responsible assessment of open science” is organised in collaboration with EPFL. It will take place on 7 February 2024 at EPFL, Lausanne/Ecublens. We are delighted to welcome Dr Elizabeth Gadd as a speaker. Dr Elizabeth (Lizzie) Gadd chairs the International Network of Research Management Societies INORMS Research Evaluation Group … Read more
Today’s challenges in scientometrics include overemphasis on existing metrics and the need for improved interdisciplinary indices [1,2,3,5,8]. An interdisciplinary project team based at ETH Zurich, co-lead by Prof. Peter Egger (economist) and Prof. Ce Zhang (computer scientist), addressed this issue by developing a hierarchical classification system that categorizes publications into disciplines, fields, and subfields based … Read more
CoARA (www.coara.eu) is being adopted by a number of Swiss higher education institutions. The 10 principles of CoARA imply a profound change in the criteria for evaluating scientific research, and at all levels of this evaluation, in a systemic way. For a successful implementation, university management will therefore need the support of researchers within their … Read more
The second SYoS workshop, which took place on 12 October 2023 at ETH Zurich, was dedicated to the topic of “reflexive bibliometrics”. The term “reflexive bibliometrics” may not be familiar to many, but it addresses an important phenomenon, namely, that many actors in the science system (e.g. Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) or individual researchers) adapt … Read more
On October 11, 2023, the second lecture in the series “Swiss Year of Scientometrics” took place at ETH Zurich. Over 50 participants gathered on a sunny autumn afternoon to listen to Professor Emanuel Kulczycki’s lecture on “Reframing scientometrics: How ontological understanding of science influences what we count and how we interpret it”. A video recording … Read more
“More is better” surely also applies to the journal impact factor (IF), wouldn’t you agree? A paper published in a high IF journal clearly must create a significant impact in the research community. Or is that an oversimplification? Taking a closer look, we will see how an impact factor can go up and down unexpectedly. … Read more
The second SYoS lecture on “Reframing scientometrics: How ontological understanding of science influences what we count and how we interpret it” is organised in collaboration with the Centre for Higher Education and Science Studies (CHESS). It will take place on 11 October 2023 at ETH Zurich (Campus Zentrum, Leonhardstrasse 21, 8092 Zürich, LEE E 101). … Read more
Switzerland and the UK are partly barred from participation in the huge research programme Horizon Europe. This limits access to research funding for scientists in both countries and might hinder international collaborations in larger projects. The loss of these funding opportunities and a potential loss of EU collaborations might have a negative impact on these … Read more
On 8 June 2023, the first SYoS Workshop took place at ETH Zurich. It followed Dr Stefanie Haustein’s opening lecture entitled “Opportunities and challenges of scientometrics: Diversification of data sources and applications”. The workshop was moderated by Sven Hug from the Swiss Science Council. In addition to Dr Stefanie Haustein (University of Ottawa), the workshop … Read more
