Het themanummer van Ethics in Science and Environmental Politics (ESEP) Volume 8 (Printed June 2008 ) getiteld: The use and misuse of bibliometric indices in evaluating scholarly performance is volledig toegankelijk via Open Access. 8)

Quantifying the relative performance of individual scholars, groups of scholars, departments, institutions, provinces/states/regions and countries has become an integral part of decision-making over research policy, funding allocations, awarding of grants, faculty hirings, and claims for promotion and tenure. Bibliometric indices (based mainly upon citation counts), such as the h-index and the journal impact factor, are heavily relied upon in such assessments. There is a growing consensus, and a deep concern, that these indices — more-and-more often used as a replacement for the informed judgement of peers — are misunderstood and are, therefore, often misinterpreted and misused. The articles in this ESEP Theme Section present a range of perspectives on these issues. Alternative approaches, tools and metrics that will hopefully lead to a more balanced role for these instruments are presented.

Browman HI, Stergiou KI
INTRODUCTION: Factors and indices are one thing, deciding who is scholarly, why they are scholarly, and the relative value of their scholarship is something else entirely
ESEP 8:1-3

Campbell P
Escape from the impact factor
ESEP 8:5-7

Lawrence PA
Lost in publication: how measurement harms science
ESEP 8:9-11

Todd PA, Ladle RJ
Hidden dangers of a ‘citation culture’
ESEP 8:13-16

Taylor M, Perakakis P, Trachana V
The siege of science
ESEP 8:17-40

Cheung WWL
The economics of post-doc publishing
ESEP 8:41-44

Tsikliras AC
Chasing after the high impact
ESEP 8:45-47

Zitt M, Bassecoulard E
Challenges for scientometric indicators: data demining, knowledge flows measurements and diversity issues
ESEP 8:49-60

Harzing AWK, van der Wal R
Google Scholar as a new source for citation analysis
ESEP 8:61-73

Pauly D, Stergiou KI
Re-interpretation of ‘influence weight’ as a citation-based Index of New Knowledge (INK)
ESEP 8:75-78

Giske J
Benefitting from bibliometry
ESEP 8:79-81

Butler L
Using a balanced approach to bibliometrics: quantitative performance measures in the Australian Research Quality Framework
ESEP 8:83-92
Erratum

Bornmann L, Mutz R, Neuhaus C, Daniel HD
Citation counts for research evaluation: standards of good practice for analyzing bibliometric data and presenting and interpreting results
ESEP 8:93-102

Harnad S
Validating research performance metrics against peer rankings
ESEP 8:103-107

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