Research Performance Indicators: Threat and/or Opportunity for Educational Research?

Author(s):

Michael Hansen

Conference:

ECER 2009

Network:

23. Policy Studies and Politics of Education

Format:

Paper

Session Information

23 SES 05 D, Research Politics and the Knowledge-Policy Relationship (Part 1)

Paper Session. Continued in 23 SES 06 D

Time:

2009-09-29

08:30-10:00

Room:

HG, HS 21

Chair:

Lisbeth Lundahl

Contribution

Not only education but also educational research is being measured and indexed regarding its performance and quality. Increasingly, researchers, research fields, and countries are being ranked on the basis of publication production and citation impact. In an expression of dissent with this movement the editors of 56 journals in the history of science, technology and medicine demanded that their journals should be removed from a new tool for measurement of scholarly work, the ERIH (European Reference Index for the Humanities) (Editorial, 2009). There are indeed many threats and problems in this movement. Indexes can in themselves be criticized (Seglen, 1997) but it is also an important fact that different fields and subfields have different patterns of communication and of publishing (Hicks, 2004). When funding is based on indexes fitting some research traditions better than others this could mean that some traditions will be weeded out in the long run. In order to control this development it is essential that we as educational researchers master the tools by which we are measured. However, these index systems also offer educational research some interesting opportunities. Most importantly they can provide input for the self-reflection of the field seen as a self-regulated communication system (Leydesdorff, 2003). The idea of using bibliometric methods in the service of the discipline is not new (c.f. Schriewer & Tenorth, 1998), but there are few empirical examples of its adoption. In this paper the publications of a sample of Swedish scholars in educational research are used to develop contrasting pictures of contemporary Swedish research in education. References will be made to international studies of educational research (e.g. Bence & Oppenheim, 2004; Ingwersen, Larsen, & Noyons, 2001; Phelan, Anderson, & Bourke, 2000) as well as to historical developments.

Method

This is a quantitative study where the publications of a sample of Swedish scholars in educational research has been collected. The publications has been categorized in terms of publication type (e.g. article, book), prestige of journal or publisher, subject area etc. Background data on the researchers is used to identify different subfields.

Expected Outcomes

Different subfields within Swedish educational research will be identified in terms of publications patterns. Some major universities will be compared and the implications of a new system for Swedish research funding will be discussed.

References

Bence, V., & Oppenheim, C. (2004). The role of academic journal publications in the UK Research Assessment Exercise. Learned Publishing, 17, 53-68. Editorial. (2009). Journals Under Threat: a Joint Response From History of Science, Technology and Medicine Editors. Social Studies of Science, 39(1), 6-9. Hicks, D. (2004). The Four Literatures of Social Science: The use of publication and patent statistics in studies of S & T systems. In Handbook of Quantitative Science and Technology Research (pp. 473-496): Kluwer. Ingwersen, P., Larsen, B., & Noyons, E. (2001). Mapping national research profiles in social science disciplines. Journal of Documentation, 57(6), 715-740. Leydesdorff, L. (2003). A sociological theory of communication : the self-organisation of the knowledge-based society (2. ed.). Parkland, FL: Universal publ. Phelan, T. J., Anderson, D. S., & Bourke, P. (2000). Educational Research in Australia: A Bibliometric Analysis. In The Impact of Educational Research (pp. 573-671): Department of Education, Training and Youth Affairs. Schriewer, J. & Tenorth, H.-E.(1998). Preface. In P. Drewek & Lüth, C. (Eds.) History of Ecucational Studies. Gent: C.S.H.P. Seglen, P. O. (1997). Why the impact factor of journals should not be used for evaluating research. BMJ, 314, 498-502.

Author Information

Michael Hansen

University of Gothenburg

Department of Education

Göteborg

186

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