Standards issues in a national bibliometric database: The Australian case

Abstract

In recent years researchers in the Performance Indicators Project at the Australian National University have undertaken a number of projects involving collaboration with colleagues in England or attempts to replicate results obtained by others. All projects have necessitated close scrutiny of the methodologies previously used or to be used and have made clear the urgent need for comparable standards. In this paper we have focused on two projects: one, an analysis of Australia's shares of publications and citations, where we sought to learn from the debate on methodology that surrounded the question of decline in British science; the second, an analysis of astronomy publications in Australia where we sought to replicate methodology used in a previous European study.