7.5.1The scientometrics perspective

Different fields have different standards as their research communities may have their own, different communication cultures. It is known that scholarly and, more generally, scientific communication in the humanities and a large part of the social sciences considerably differs from those in the sciences. Those communication differences correlate with the ways in which both the scientific and broader societal impact of SSH evolve over time (Callaert et al., 2011; Berman and Fox, 2023). This simple truth has resulted in many initiatives on the part of the scientometricians to overcome the observed problems but also in much frustration as the question arose of in how far research output is quantifiable at all to serve as input of measurement let alone in the context of research evaluation. Most of the known issues have become almost commonplaces: The different publication types and venues, the publication language, the different role that citations play, information sources and targets in the humanities that often considerably deviate from those in the sciences and even from those in many fields of the social sciences. The final knock-out for bibliometricians was probably the insufficient coverage of available data sources, which, in many fields of the humanities, resulted in an inadequate and certainly not representative basis for measurement and the indispensable benchmarking exercises. Furthermore, research work in humanities does not only manifest itself in publications in journals, conference proceedings, book chapters or monographs.

Scientometrics initiatives comprised, for instance, suggestion for improving the coverage of underlying data and extending the metrics to be applied to measure research activity and impact. This was, of course, based on appropriate scientometrics studies on how to cope with the challenges arising from the attempts to measure research in the social sciences and, most notably, in the humanities (Glänzel & Chi, 2019). However, broadening the coverage of bibliographic databases (Martin et al., 2010; Lauer, 2016) or using alternative metrics did not prove a satisfactory remedy to encompass all or at least most typical research activities and manifestations of their impact either. The reception of these solutions by the respective communities was therefore rather restrained, if not sceptical.  

Hammarfelt (2016) has recently summarised the state-of-the-art of scientometrics in the humanities research, elaborated the main characteristics of communication patters in the humanities and pled for the use of scientometrics measures, which need to be based on the publication and communication practices in the humanities, to complement qualitative assessment (peer reviews). As Kousha and Thelwall document (2023) the advent of new analytical methodologies and techniques as well as the increased presence of broader, augmented datasets in the Open Science and Current Research Information System (CRIS) sphere, will gradually manifest their potential and aid the design of novel scientometric approaches that will benefit SSH.