Bibliometrics in the library
Wageningen UR library experience
Wouter Gerritsma
at Milton Keynes, March 5th 2013
Contents
 Research Evaluation in the Netherlands
 CRIS & Repository @Wageningen
 Bibliometrics module
 Research questions
 Developments in the marketplace
 Lessons learned
 Some advice
Research assessment in the Netherlands
 Supervised by VSNU/QANU
● 6 year cycle for external peer reviews
● After 3 year midterm review
● Unit of analysis (in Wageningen): Graduate schools
 Citation analyses are not stipulated in the current
Standard Evaluation Protocol (SEP).
● This has become mandatory at Wageningen UR, als
at the social sciences department and for the
research institutes
SEP criteria
 quality (including international academic reputation and
PhD training)
 productivity (the relationship between input and output)
 societal relevance (including valorisation)
 vitality and feasibility (the ability to react adequately to
important changes in the environment).
Metis, our CRIS
 Metis is a Current Research Information System (CRIS)
 Data entry at chair group level
 Quality control by the library
● Locating full text (uploading to e-depot)
● Maintenance journal lists
● Document type assignation and inclusion of DOI's
 Compulsory output registration
● Research assessments only on metis registered
publications
 Information on all labour relations of faculty and staff
 Information on all projects
Repository or Institutional Bibliography?
 Wageningen Yield (WaY) is the repository of Wageningen
UR
● Synchronized overnight with the updates from Metis
● WaY contains metadata descriptions of all
Wageningen UR publication output, >190.000 items
● WaY is our OA repository, >40.000 items
● WaY is our tool for citation analyses, >22.000
publications
● Advanced bibliometrics
Full screen image with title
How do we compare numbers
 Scientist Z. Math has a publication from 2002 with 17 citations
 Scientist M. Biology has a publication from 2008 with 32 citations
Baselines for Mathematics
Baselines for Molecular Biology
For a single publication
 Zee, F.P.v.d., G. Lettinga & J.A. Field (2001) Azo dye
decolourisation by anaerobic granular sludge.
Chemosphere 44:1169-1176.
● Citations from WoS: 94
 Journal: Chemosphere
 Categorised by ESI in Environment/Ecology
 Baseline data for Environment/Ecology.
● Article from 2001 in Environment/ecology:
● On average: 19.36 citations;
● Top 10%: 44 citations; Top1%: 141 citations
 Relative Impact: 94 / 19.36 = 4.9
van Veller, M.G.P et al. (2010). Bibliometric analyses on repository contents
for the evaluation of research at Wageningen UR. In: Qualitative and
Quantitative Methods in Libraries: Theory and Applications. A. Katsirikou and
C. H. Skiadas. p.19-26. http://edepot.wur.nl/7266.
Example of results
The actual publications and their impact
are provided
Research credits report (partly)
Slice and dice any way you want
Advanced bibliometric indicators
 Follow Moed (1995) as closely as possible; but.....
 Web of Science is used for citation data
● We can’t make corrections for self citations
 Essential Science Indicators for baseline data (World
average, Top 10% and Top 1%)
● Limited number of research fields (22)
BUT:
 We can determine the representativeness of the citation
analysis!
Representativeness
Publication type
Refereed articles
#Pubs
324
Non-refereed articles
7
Books
1
Refereed book chapters
36
Non-refereed book chapters
13
PhD Theses
45
Conference papers
137
Total Academic Publications
563
Representativeness
Publication type
Refereed articles
#Pubs
WoS
324
Non-refereed articles
7
Google Scholar
1
Refereed book chapters
36
Non-refereed book chapters
13
PhD Theses
45
Conference papers
137
Total Academic Publications
563
Repr.
288
89%
Prospective versus Retrospective analyses
 CWTS performs normally Prospective analyses
● Current researchers, 10 years back
● Missing some retired bigshots!
 You need to keep track of the actual publication record
for retrospective analyses. This is difficult for external
parties.
● Head-tail problems
 No research on differences in outcomes of prospective
versus retrospective analyses
● We need research in this area!
Self citations
 CWTS performs corrections for self citations
 Correcting for self citations in Web of Science is
incomplete
● As long as the RsearcherID is not fully introduced
this will be impossible in WoS

Correcting for Self citations in Scopus is possible

Belgian research has shown that it has not a
tremendous influence
Glänzel, W., K. Debackere, B. Thijs & A. Schubert (2006). A concise review on the
role of author self-citations in information science, bibliometrics and science policy.
Scientometrics, 67(2): 263-277 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11192-006-0098-9
Some observations on commercial
analytical tools
Web of Science
 Citation data (you can include citations from other
databases on Wok)
 API to download citation data
 Baselines from ESI
 InCites more advanced, but where do you manage the
information?
 Author disambiguation is a major problem
Scopus
 Citation data obtainable through an API
 Benchmarking with SciVal Strata, no API yet
 Not yet fully developed, major changes coming up.
CWTS monitor
 So far the most elegant and comprehensive citation
analysis tool (still in beta) to be launched soon.
 Citation database agnostic!
Google Scholar
 Very popular by social scientists and arts & humanities
 Have you ever retrieved more than 1000 results from
any Google product?
 Google Scholar can't count
 Harzing's
Publish or Perish software does a decent job.
Altmetrics
 Quickly developing
● ScienceCard
● Total-Impact
● Readermeter
● Microsoft
Academic Search
● etc.
 We look into inclusion
on top of the WaY for
article level metrics
Wouters, P. & R. Costas (2012). Users, narcissism and control.
Utrecht, NL: SURFfoundation. http://www.surffoundation.nl/
en/publicaties/Pages/Users_narcissism_control.aspx.
CRIS and Bibliometric analysis tools
 If you maintain a CRIS, why should you maintain your
researchers and organisation structure in a bibliometrics
analysis tool as well?
 Do commercial packages have ways to publicize the
results for scrutiny by the researchers?
Lessons learned
Matching Wageningen Yield and WoS
1161 peer reviewed
articles not in ISI journals
Missing in WoS:
1159 articles
WaY: 10933 articles
WoS: 9577 articles
Missing in Way:
807 articles
It is a lot of hard work to keep track of all publications. The library
can a should do a better job than commercial service providers
Journal selection and impact @WUR
Why in the library?
 Library is the functional manager of Metis / WaY because
of wide experience with bibliographic metadata
 Library manages contracts with publisher(s) of external
databases that are being used
 Library has experience in developing and maintaining
large databases
 Library has ample experience in searching complicated
databases such as Web of Science
Advantage of using Metis / WaY
 Improvements in publication lists, etc. recorded
 Knowledge of, and experience with bibliometric analyses
is better institutionalized
 More visibility through Open Access management
 Clarity / transparency for researchers
 Analysis of a single unit within the institute offers
advantages for the organization as a whole
 Better understanding of our own researchers
● We know where they publish
● We know what they cite
● We know something about their impact
Raising library awareness
 Improvement of the (metadata) quality in the repository
 Quality has lead to compulsory registration for research
assessments
 Presentations for research groups during the preparation
for peer reviews
 Presentations based on detailed studies of single groups
 Library gives advice on elements for publication
strategies for groups and individuals
● there is a huge demand for these workshops
Closing the circle
My advise
 Start small, gain experience
 Show you can pull it off
 Be transparent!
 How much is your university spending research
evaluations?
 Invest those resources in your own systems
Thank you
http://viaf.org/viaf/285392263/
http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7274-0698
http://wu.academia.edu/WouterGerritsma
http://www.researcherid.com/rid/A-4161-2008
http://www.mendeley.com/profiles/wouter-gerritsma
http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Wouter_Gerritsma
http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=3iDBE-MAAAAJ
http://academic.research.microsoft.com/Author/34373815
http://www.narcis.nl/person/info:eu-repo/dai/nl/33714253X