Abstract
We present a novel way to frame a discussion of changes in publication patterns that occur in a context of performance-based research funding systems (PRFSs). Adopting an approach derived from social epistemology, we foreground the dialectical nature of knowledge. This allows us to relate changes in publication patterns to PRFS and show the tensions that emerge between relatively diverse research fields with diverse publication practices and bibliometric indicators within PRFSs that reinforce a singular view of research goals. Specifically, we highlight that the employment of bibliometric indicators result in a fixed hierarchy among communication media that may be at odds with the goals within research fields subjected to PRFSs. These ideas are illustrated with an empirical analysis of changes in publication patterns within the field of educational research at the University of Gothenburg (GU; 2005–2014) in Sweden. We contrast the observed changes with implicit priorities in the national and institutional PRFS that operate in this context since 2009. Findings from bibliometric analysis indicate a move away from publication traditions that used to be characteristic of educational research: the growth in the number of journal articles is greater than that in the number of book chapters, while the number of reports is on a declining slope. In relation to PRFSs, we show that conclusive judgement on the desirability of the observed changes is hardly achievable. If one adopts the aims implicit in PRFS, research performance appears to be enhanced. If one sides with the views of many educational researchers, then some of the trends might be an indication of undesirable changes.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Aagaard, K. (2015). How incentives trickle down: Local use of a national bibliometric indicator system. Science and Public Policy, 42(5), 725–737. https://doi.org/10.1093/scipol/scu087.
Aagaard, K., Bloch, C., & Schneider, J. W. (2015). Impacts of performance-based research funding systems: The case of the Norwegian Publication Indicator. Research Evaluation, 24(2), 106–117.
Aldberg, H., & Jacobsson, C. (2014). Bibliometriskt underlag för medelsfördelning. Vetenskapsrådet. https://www.vr.se/download/18.5a947f0d145b21c1709f9d/1399897207262/Bibliometriskt+underlag+f%C3%B6r+medelsf%C3%B6rdelning_140512.pdf. Accessed 20 Mar 2016.
Angervall, P., & Gustafsson, J. (2014). Becoming an Academic Researcher. Policy Futures in Education, 12(2), 191–199.
Anslagsfördelning och kostnadsdebitering för budgetåret 2015 samt planeringsramar för 2016–2017., Pub. L. No. E 2014/257 § Universitetsstyrelsen (2014). http://medarbetarportalen.gu.se/digitalAssets/1497/1497483_anslagsf–rdelning-och-kostnadsdebitering-2015-inkl-bilagor.pdf. Accessed 22 Apr 2016.
Butler, L. (2003). Modifying publication practices in response to funding formulas. Research Evaluation, 12(1), 39–46.
Butler, L. (2004). What happens when funding is linked to publication counts? In H. F. Moed, W. Glänzel, & U. Schmoch (Eds.), Handbook of quantitative science and technology research: the use of publication and patent statistics in studies of S&T systems (pp. 389–405). Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Carlsson, H. (2009). Allocation of Research Funds Using Bibliometric Indicators—Asset and Challenge to Swedish Higher Education Sector. InfoTrend, 64(4), 82–88.
de Rijcke, S., Wouters, P. F., Rushforth, A. D., Franssen, T. P., & Hammarfelt, B. (2015). Evaluation practices and effects of indicator use—a literature review. Research, Evaluation, rvv038.
Dees, W. (2008). Innovative scientometric methods for a continuous monitoring of research activities in educational science. In H. Kretschmer & F. Havemann (Eds.), Proceedings of WIS 2008, Berlin (pp. 1–10). Berlin.
Dougherty, K. J., Jones, S. M., Lahr, H., Pheatt, L., Natow, R. S., & Reddy, V. (2016). Performance funding for higher education. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Engels, T. C. E., Ossenblok, T. L. B., & Spruyt, E. H. J. (2012). Changing publication patterns in the Social Sciences and Humanities, 2000–2009. Scientometrics, 93(2), 373–390.
Englund, T. (2006). New Trends in Swedish Educational Research. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, 50(4), 383–396.
Ett lyft för forskning och innovation, Pub. L. No. Regeringens proposition 2008/09:50 (2008). http://www.regeringen.se/contentassets/05cb6c62a34e4b37a114611a3ebcbd5b/ett-lyft-for-forskning-och-innovation-prop.-20080950. Accessed 10 Jan 2014.
Fuller, S. (2002). Social epistemology (2nd ed.). Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Gläser, J. (2017). A fight on epistemological quicksand: Comment on the dispute between van den Besselaar et al. and Butler. Journal of Informetrics, 11(3), 927–932.
Gothenburg University Library: Allocation. (2015). http://www.ub.gu.se/publicera/bibliometri/resursfordelning/ Accessed 4 Dec 2015.
Gothenburg University Library: Publication types in GUP. (2015). http://www.ub.gu.se/publicera/publikationsbas/publtyper/. Accessed 26 Jan 2016.
Hammarfelt, B., & de Rijcke, S. (2015). Accountability in context: effects of research evaluation systems on publication practices, disciplinary norms, and individual working routines in the faculty of Arts at Uppsala University. Research Evaluation, 24(1), 63–77.
Hansen, M., & Lindblad, S. (2010). Forskningskommunikation och Publiceringsmönsrwe inom Utbildningsvetenskap (VETENSKAPSRÅDETS RAPPORTSERIE) (p. 95). Stockholm: Vetenskapsrådet. https://publikationer.vr.se/produkt/forskningskommunikation-och-publiceringsmonster-inom-utbild/ Accessed 14 Oct 2015.
Hicks, D. (2004). The Four Literatures of Social Science. In H. F. Moed, W. Glänzel, & U. Schmoch (Eds.), Handbook of quantitative science and technology research (pp. 473–496). Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Hicks, D. (2012). Performance-based university research funding systems. Research Policy, 41(2), 251–261.
Hicks, D., Wouters, P., Waltman, L., de Rijcke, S., & Rafols, I. (2015). The Leiden Manifesto for research metrics. Nature, 520, 429–431.
Hillman, N. W., Tandberg, D. A., & Fryar, A. H. (2015). Evaluating the impacts of “new” performance funding in higher education. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 37(4), 501–519.
Inriktningsbeslut för budgetarbetet 2012. Sammanfattning., Pub. L. No. V 2011/190 (2011). http://medarbetarportalen.gu.se/digitalAssets/1535/1535388_inriktningsbeslut-f–r-budgetarbetet-2012.pdf. Accessed 4 Apr 2016.
Jiménez-Contreras, E., de Moya Anegón, F., & López-Cózar, E. D. (2003). The evolution of research activity in Spain. Research Policy, 32(1), 123–142.
Jonkers, K., & Zacharewicz, T. (2016). Research Performance Based Funding Systems: a Comparative Assessment (JRC Science For Policy Report). European Commission: Joint Research Centre. https://rio.jrc.ec.europa.eu/en/file/9514/download?token=-8JG6aKx. Accessed 25 July 2016.
Kronman, U., Gunnarsson, M., & Karlsson, S. (2010). The bibliometric database at the Swedish Research Council—contents, methods and indicators. Vetenskapsrådet. https://doi.org/10.13140/rg.2.1.1271.6244. Accessed 12 Dec 2017.
Moed, H. F. (2008). UK Research Assessment Exercises: Informed judgments on research quality or quantity? Scientometrics, 74(1), 153–161.
Moed, H. F., Burger, W. J. M., Frankfort, J. G., & Van Raan, A. F. J. (1985). The use of bibliometric data for the measurement of university research performance. Research Policy, 14(3), 131–149.
Nelhans, G., & Eklund, P. (2015). Resursfördelningsmodeller. På bibliometrisk grund vid ett urval svenska lärosäten (No. 30) (p. 64). Högskolan i Borås. http://hb.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:789871/FULLTEXT01.pdf.
NSD—Norsk senter for forskningsdata. (2017). Kriterier for godkjenning av publiseringskanaler. https://dbh.nsd.uib.no/publiseringskanaler/OmKriterier Accessed 26 Apr 2017.
Öhrn, E., & Lundahl, L. (Eds.). (2013). Kön och karriär i akademin: en studie inom det utbildningsvetenskapliga fältet. Göteborg: Acta universitatis Gothoburgensis.
Osuna, C., Cruz-Castro, L., & Sanz-Menéndez, L. (2011). Overturning some assumptions about the effects of evaluation systems on publication performance. Scientometrics, 86(3), 575–592.
Pajić, D. (2015). Globalization of the social sciences in Eastern Europe: genuine breakthrough or a slippery slope of the research evaluation practice? Scientometrics, 102(3), 2131–2150.
Rabovsky, T. M. (2014). Using data to manage for performance at public universities. Public Administration Review, 74(2), 260–272.
Schneider, J. W. (2009). An outline of the bibliometric indicator used for performance-based funding of research institutions in Norway. European Political Science, 8(3), 364–378.
Schneider, J. W., Aagaard, K., & Bloch, C. W. (2016). What happens when national research funding is linked to differentiated publication counts? A comparison of the Australian and Norwegian publication-based funding models. Research Evaluation, 25(3), 244–256.
Silfver, E. (2013). Subjektspositioner i olika utbildningsvetenskapliga miljöer. In E. Öhrn & L. Lundahl (Eds.), Kön och karriär i akademin: en studie inom det utbildningsvetenskapliga fältet (pp. 73–106). Göteborg: Acta universitatis Gothoburgensis.
Sivertsen, G. (2016a). A bibliometric indicator with a balanced representation of all fields. In Proceedings of the 21ST International Conference on Science and Technology Indicators. Valencia, Spain (pp. 910–914).
Sivertsen, G. (2016b). Publication-based funding: The Norwegian model. In M. Ochsner, S. E. Hug, & H.-D. Daniel (Eds.), Research assessment in the humanities (pp. 79–90). Cham: Springer.
Sivertsen, G., & Larsen, B. (2012). Comprehensive bibliographic coverage of the social sciences and humanities in a citation index: an empirical analysis of the potential. Scientometrics, 91(2), 567–575.
Svensson, M. (2013). Tekniska system—att se teknik i sammanhang. In J. Hallström & C. Klasander (Eds.), Ginners teknikdidaktiska handbok: några teser om teknik, skola och samhälle | The Ginner Handbook of Technology Education: Some Theses about Technology, School and Society (pp. 73–85). Norrköping: Centrum för tekniken i skolan (CETIS), Linköpings universitet.
Thomson Reuters. (2010, April 27). Web of Science Coverage Expansion. https://community.endnote.com/t5/Citation-Impact-Center/Web-of-Science-Coverage-Expansion/ba-p/10663 Accessed 13 Sept 2018.
University of Gothenburg & Universitetslednings kansli. Fördellning av tillkomande anslag för forskning 2009, §10 (2008). http://medarbetarportalen.gu.se/digitalAssets/1417/1417612_Fordelning_av_tillkommande_anslag_2009.pdf Accessed 11 Dec 2015.
van Leeuwen, T. N., van Wijk, E., & Wouters, P. F. (2016). Bibliometric analysis of output and impact based on CRIS data: a case study on the registered output of a Dutch university. Scientometrics, 106(1), 1–16.
Vanderstraeten, R. (2011). Scholarly communication in education journals. Social Science History, 35(1), 109–130.
Vanderstraeten, R., Vandermoere, F., & Hermans, M. (2016). Scholarly communication in AERA journals, 1931 to 2014. Review of Research in Education, 40, 38–61.
Vetenskapsrådet. (2017). The bibliometric database at the Swedish Research Council—contents, methods and indicators (No. 113-2010–6148). Vetenskapsrådet. https://vr.se/download/18.7a00beb015988a0395140244/1485525234635/The+bibliometric+database+at+the+Swedish+Research+Council+-+contents%2C+methods+and+indicators.pdf. Accessed 13 Jan 2018.
Yang Hansen, K., & Gustafsson, J.-E. (2016). Causes of educational segregation in Sweden—school choice or residential segregation. Educational Research and Evaluation, 22(1–2), 23–44.
Acknowledgements
The authors thank Tim C.E. Engels, Raf Guns, Sverker Lindblad, Gustaf Nelhans, and Ernst D. Thoutenhoofd, among others, for their critical remarks which have helped to develop the ideas presented here.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Electronic supplementary material
Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Sīle, L., Vanderstraeten, R. Measuring changes in publication patterns in a context of performance-based research funding systems: the case of educational research in the University of Gothenburg (2005–2014). Scientometrics 118, 71–91 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-018-2963-8
Received:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-018-2963-8
Keywords
- Publication patterns
- Bibliometric indicators
- Research performance
- Educational research
- Sweden
- Social epistemology