Bibliometrics
Bibliometrics is the quantitative analysis of publications and their patterns, including authorship, citation, and scholarly impact.
Citation analysis: The study of references among publications to map influence, relationships, and patterns of scholarship. It turns citation links into evidence about how research connects and circulates.
Research evaluation: The assessment of research quality, contribution, or performance using qualitative and quantitative evidence. Bibliometric measures are commonly used alongside expert judgment to assess research.
Scientometrics: The quantitative study of science, including its activities, outputs, institutions, and development. It is a broader field that includes publication-focused bibliometric analysis.
Publish or perish: A professional pressure to produce frequent publications to secure or advance an academic career. Publication counts can reinforce career incentives to prioritize output volume.
h-index: A researcher has an h-index of h when h publications have each received at least h citations. This widely used indicator combines publication output with citation counts.
Journal Impact Factor: A journal-level metric calculated from citations to recent content divided by the number of citable items published. It is a prominent, often contested measure used to compare journals.
Informetrics: The quantitative study of information in any form, including its production, dissemination, and use. It generalizes quantitative analysis beyond publications and scholarly communication.
San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment: A 2012 declaration urging research institutions and funders not to use journal-based metrics as proxies for individual work quality. It directly challenges evaluation practices that overrely on journal indicators.
Bradford's law: An empirical regularity describing how articles on a subject are distributed across journals of decreasing productivity. It models the uneven concentration of relevant publications across journals.
Altmetrics: Measures of online attention to research outputs, including mentions in news, social media, and policy documents. They track forms of attention that citation-based indicators may miss.