Het meten van onderzoeksactiviteit en –prestatie in de sociale en humane wetenschappen: Diana Hicks
Social science research communities around the world face pressures for quantitative evaluation imposed from outside. In this environment, the preferred evaluation methodology tends to be SSCI-based bibliometrics. I will reflect on the merits of this approach by examining the nature of the social science literature as it relates to bibliometric evaluation. Bibliometric evaluation in the social sciences is possible. However, if done correctly, it is messy, complex and expensive. Why? In the social sciences, we find English language journal publication, books, publishing in local languages and contributions to trade literature and the popular press. Citations accumulate slowly and the idea of a core set of journals can be problematic. This paper examines these difficulties and what I have come to call the four literatures of social science: journal articles, books, national literature, and non-scholarly literature. I will examine the methodological problems the four literatures present in evaluation and will assess the success of efforts to resolve the problems and the consequences of ignoring them.
Curriculum vitae
Diana Hicks is Professor and Chair of the School of Public Policy, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta GA, USA. She obtained her DPhil in Science and Technology Policy Studies from SPRU, University of Sussex, UK. For almost 10 years Hicks was on the faculty of SPRU. Between 1998 and 2003 she was the Senior Policy Analyst at CHI Research, Inc. where she conducted numerous policy analyses for government agencies based on empirical information in patent and paper databases. Her work has been supported by and has informed policy makers in the U.S., Europe and Japan. Prof. Hicks has also taught at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, SPRU and worked at the National Institute of Science and Technology Policy (NISTEP) in Tokyo.