CfP: Revista CS (No. 40, 2023) | Metrics, impact and appropriation: contemporary challenges in the valuation of the scientific production in social sciences and humanities
The scientific production in higher education institutions or research centers fulfills at least two functions. On the one hand, it reflects the diversity of knowledge fields in which the generation of new knowledge is inscribed. On the other hand, it is the input for analyzing and understanding the institution’s research capabilities. In that sense, depending on the volume of the scientific results, more or less will be the amount of information available in the different academic circuits.
This information is used to generate various reports that are supposed to account for the quality and impact of the research. At the international level, mostly, hierarchical listings of universities and research centers are created according to criteria related to productivity and citation impact. At the national level, MinCiencias in Colombia, CONACYT in Mexico, CONICET in Argentina, CNPq in Brazil, and CONICYT in Chile are examples of institutions with evaluation systems and measurement models that allow to escalate and classify the different actors of the research ecosystems: groups, centers, researchers, as well as journals or academic publishing houses, among others.
The effects that this entails at the institutional level and in regional contexts range from the definition and implementation of organizational policies to strengthen the internal research ecosystem to the (re)formulation of Science, Technology and Innovation policies. To achieve this, the human talent’s hiring and remuneration conditions are modified, and strategic plans are defined to positively influence the indicators of the international reports, for example, by creating incentives for the generation of new publications, but also by projecting the inclusion of journals and publishing programs in international indexes or reference databases. In other cases, these effects materialize in the creation of routes, processes and follow-up channels for research production, which end up promoting the institutional development of a series of units that are constituted based on the administrative support for research processes, the procurement of external resources and the configuration of inter-institutional collaboration networks to mobilize research opportunities at the local, regional and international levels.
Likewise, diagnostic studies of scientific capabilities, characterization of internal research dynamics or analysis of the state of research development are increasingly proliferating in institutions. For this purpose, we use scientometric variables, in which various units of analysis are combined. Some studies focus on researchers as the unit of analysis, others on related actors such as research groups and centers; and they also follow up their publications, mainly scientific journals and publishing houses.
Traditionally, these analyses are based on quantitative bibliometric indicators, with a strong emphasis on citation impact. This perspective assumes the existence of a direct relationship between citation and scientific quality. However, approaches contemplating a broader view of indicators associated with quality and impact have emerged. Among them, the alternative and next-generation metrics, such as responsible and evaluation metrics for open science, stand out.
This issue of Revista CS offers a space for the publication of original empirical and conceptual papers that, from different disciplines and methodological proposals, address one or more of the following topics in the Latin American region or any of its countries or regions:
Critical perspectives on national and international policies on Science, Technology, and Innovation.
Pros and cons of the national systems for the measurement and assessment of researchers, groups, and research centers.
Proposals of indicators to assess the quality of the publishing houses, the institutional capacity in research or the effectiveness of the strategies for the social appropriation of knowledge.
Indicators for the assessment of journals and books: strengths and weaknesses of the citation impact.
Traditional metrics, new metrics, and alternative metrics. Proactive and reflective reviews.
New challenges in the relationship among editor, reviewer, author, and readers.
Social networks, academic social networks and academic networks: changes and continuities in the scientific dissemination.
Open access as a rule or as an option. New trends in scientific communication.
New approaches in infometry, bibliometry, and scientometry: case studies.
If you have any questions about this call for papers, please contact us at cs@icesi.edu.co
Contact Info:
Editor Felipe Van der Huck, PhD
Guest editors (CS 40, 2023)
Adolfo A. Abadía, Editorial Icesi, Dirección de Investigaciones, Universidad Icesi, Cali
María Alejandra Tejada-Gómez, Vicerrectoría de Investigación, Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, Bogotá
Robin Castro, Director de la Maestría en Estudios Sociales y Políticos, Universidad Icesi, Cali