Critical Evaluation of Bibliometric Analyses
Reflect on
- how the publication data were collected, which data source was used and how well are the publications of the analysed unit covered by the data source (documentation types, subject area, publication years)
- has the analysed unit produced enough publications
- differences in publication and citation characteristics among subject fields
- how the publications have been matched to the analysed unit - are the author names and addresses verified by the scientists
- how the citations have been matched to the target articles
- the analysed publications - their year of publication, document type, (peer-review journal, review article etc) and subject field
- the language of the publications, articles in English are more frequently indexed, bibliometrics therefore is best suited in subject fields that publish mainly in English
- self citations - are they included or excluded
- negative citations - are they included or excluded
- fractionalisation of publication and citation counts