The application of bibliometrics to research evaluation in the humanities and social sciences: An exploratory study using normalized Google Scholar data for the publications of a research institute

In the humanities and social sciences, bibliometric methods for the assessment of research performance are (so far) less common. The current study takes a concrete example in an attempt to evaluate a research institute from the area of social sciences and humanities with the help of data from Google Scholar (GS). In order to use GS for a bibliometric study, we have developed procedures for the normalisation of citation impact, building on the procedures of classical bibliometrics. In order to test the convergent validity of the normalized citation impact scores, we have calculated normalized scores for a subset of the publications based on data from the WoS or Scopus. Even if scores calculated with the help of GS and WoS/Scopus are not identical for the different publication types (considered here), they are so similar that they result in the same assessment of the institute investigated in this study: For example, the institute's papers whose journals are covered in WoS are cited at about an average rate (compared with the other papers in the journals). 1 Introduction In the classical core areas of natural and life sciences (hard sciences), quantitative methods have meanwhile become an integral part of research evaluation (Moed, 2005). In the humanities and social sciences (soft sciences) quantitative methods for the evaluation of research performance are (still) not so widespread. However, in times of limited research funding, the evaluation pressure is also rising in these disciplines, but the methodical preconditions for the application of quantitative methods are (still) not very developed. In the natural and life sciences, bibliometrics in particular has established itself as a standard procedure for quantitative research evaluation. With respect to the selection of suitable data sources and indicators, as well as the realization of a bibliometric study, standards have been developed in the meantime and also applied (Bornmann et al., 2014; Bornmann & Marx, 2014). The most used databases are Web of Science (WoS) from Thomson Reuters and Scopus from Elsevier. WoS currently contains a core set of around 11000 journals (WoS source journals); Scopus covers more than 20000 journals. However, WoS and Scopus are multidisciplinary databases which are biased towards natural and life sciences. 1.1 Problems of bibliometrics in the humanities and social sciences Bibliometrics on the basis of WoS and Scopus is unsuitable for use in the humanities and social sciences, chiefly for the following two reasons: (1) A higher proportion of …