Bibliometric Services in Research Evaluation: A New Task Area Strengthening the Jurisdiction of Academic Librarians

Science policy framed by audit culture relies heavily on performance measurement. This changing research environment affects higher education institutions and their scientific libraries. As service providers for research and teaching libraries need to demonstrate their added-value in front of various stakeholders. Some Library and Information Science (LIS) scholars and practitioners thus promote evaluative bibliometric services as a new service area. The question rises whether this trend to engage in evaluative bibliometrics will consolidate into a recognized professional task area in academic librarianship. Using Abbott’s theoretical framework the paper asks whether academic librarians claim a professional jurisdiction on bibliometric expertise in research support services and assessment. The bibliometric practices of academic librarians in the UK and Germany are studied in a comparative perspective. The collected empirical data consists of 28 expert interviews and different types of documents. This research in progress paper reports on the theoretical framework and demonstrates how it helps to interpret and understand current developments.