Assessment and support of emerging research groups.

The starting point of this paper is a desktop research assessment model that does not take properly into account the complexities of research assessment, but rather bases itself on a series of highly simplifying, questionable assumptions related to the availability, validity and evaluative significance of research performance indicators, and to funding policy criteria. The paper presents a critique of this model, and proposes alternative assessment approaches, based on an explicit evaluative framework, focusing on preconditions to performance or communication effectiveness rather than on performance itself, combining metrics and expert knowledge and using metrics primarily to set minimum standards. Giving special attention to early career scientists in emerging research groups, the paper discusses the limits of classical bibliometric indicators and altmetrics. It proposes alternative funding formula of research institutions aimed to support emerging research groups.

New developments in the use of citation analysis in research evaluation.

This paper presents an overview of research assessment methodologies developed in the field of evaluative bibliometrics, a subfield of quantitative science and technology studies, aimed to construct indicators of research performance from a quantitative statistical analysis of scientific-scholarly documents. Citation analysis is one of its key methodologies. The paper illustrates the potentialities and limitations of the use of bibliometric indicators in research assessment. It discusses the relationship between metrics and peer review; databases used as sources of bibliometric analysis; the pros and cons of indicators often applied, including journal impact factors, Hirsch indices, and normalized indicators of citation impact; and approaches to the bibliometric measurement of institutional research performance.

The actual citation impact of European oncological research.

This study provides an overview of the research performance of major European countries in the field Oncology, the most important journals in which they published their research articles, and the most important academic institutions publishing them. The analysis was based on Thomson Scientific's Web of Science (WoS) and calculated bibliometric indicators of publication activity and actual citation impact. Studying the time period 2000-2006, it gives an update of earlier studies, but at the same time it expands their methodologies, using a broader definition of the field, calculating indicators of actual citation impact, and analysing new and policy relevant aspects. Findings suggest that the emergence of Asian countries in the field Oncology has displaced European articles more strongly than articles from the USA; that oncologists who have published their articles in important, more general journals or in journals covering other specialties, rather than in their own specialist journals, have generated a relatively high actual citation impact; and that universities from Germany, and--to a lesser extent--those from Italy, the Netherlands, UK, and Sweden, dominate a ranking of European universities based on number of articles in oncology. The outcomes illustrate that different bibliometric methodologies may lead to different outcomes, and that outcomes should be interpreted with care.