Evaluating scholarship and research impact : history, practices, and policy development / Jeffrey W. Alstete, Nicholas J. Beutell, John P. Meyer.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Alstete, Jeffrey W., author.

Beutell, Nicholas J., author.

Meyer, John P., 1950- author.

Series:

Great debates in higher education

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Education, Higher--Research.

Education, Higher.

Educational change.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (213 pages).

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Bingley, England : Emerald Publishing, 2018.

Summary:

Faculty members, scholars, and researchers often ask where they should publish their work; which outlets are most suitable to showcase their research? Which journals should they publish in to ensure their work is read and cited? How can the impact of their scholarly output be maximized? The answers to these and related questions affect not only individual scholars, but also academic and research institution stakeholders who are under constant pressure to create and implement organizational policies, evaluation measures and reward systems that encourage quality, high impact research from their members. The explosion of academic research in recent years, along with advances in information technology, has given rise to omnipresent and increasingly important scholarly metrics. These measures need to be assessed and used carefully, however, as their widespread availability often tempts users to jump to improper conclusions without considering several caveats. While various quantitative tools enable the ranking, evaluating, categorizing, and comparing of journals and articles, metrics such as author or article citation counts, journal impact factors, and related measures of institutional research output are somewhat inconsistent with traditional goals and objectives of higher education research and scholarly academic endeavors. This book provides guidance to individual researchers, research organizations, and academic institutions as they grapple with rapidly developing issues surrounding scholarly metrics and their potential value to both policy-makers, as evaluation and measurement tools, and individual scholars, as a way to identify colleagues for potential collaboration, promote their position as public intellectuals, and support intellectual community engagement.

Contents:

Front Cover

Evaluating Scholarship and Research Impact

Contents

About the Authors

Preface

Chapter 1 A Primer on Policy and Research

Forms of Research and Measures

Disruptive Technology and Other Forces Affecting Research Policies

Organization of the Monograph

Chapter 2 History and Evolution of Scholarly Metrics and Impact Factors

Origin of Measuring Scholarship

Timeline of Measuring Scholarship

Scholarly Metric Usage Grows and Raises Concerns

Changing Nature of Academic Publishing

Chapter 3 Concerns and Problems

Inaccuracies

Calls for Accountability as a Pathology

Chapter 4 Benefits and Possibilities for Research Policy Improvements

Impact is Perceived as an Indirect Measure of Quality

Journal Impact Factors Can Be Useful

Informed Research Funding Decisions and Recognition

Using Scholarly Metrics in Policy Creation and Implementation

Chapter 5 Conclusion

Appendix: San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment

Putting Science into the Assessment of Research

References

Author Index

Subject Index.

Notes:

Includes index.

Includes bibliographical references.

Print version record

ISBN:

9781787563896

1787563898

9781787563872

1787563871