How does my publication behavior affect my bibliometric analysis results?

The primary aim of the Karolinska Institutet/Region Stockholm bibliometric database is to furnish Karolinska Institutet/Region Stockholm managers, departments/clinics and employees with high quality bibliometric analyses and reports (regarding e.g. publication patterns, co-publication partners and/or by-subject breakdowns). The results provide overviews of the research being conducted by Karolinska Institutet/Region Stockholm researchers as well as tools that enable scientific results to be compared internally and with the work being done in other countries. Analyses results can also be used to follow up and plan activities, and sometimes even to assess and reward scientific quality.

The incentives from the board of research for publishing could be condensed to:

• Before you publish, do a little background research into the journal to which you intend to submit your article; it should be included in the Web of Science index.
• Check the journal’s impact factor and consider whether you can choose one with a higher value.
• One high-cited article usually gives better returns on the bibliometric indicators than several low-cited articles.
• Verify all your publications. It is essential to the quality of the database, and there is an explicit intention for the choice of bibliometric model to be such that the verification of all your publications has an aggregate positive effect.

Read the full recommendations.

Recommendations concerning the use of bibliometric indicators at an individual level

Within Karolinska Institutet and Region Stockholm there are recommendations for if and how bibliometric methods should be used with data for individual researchers.

Bibliometric methods are less suitable for the assessment of individuals or smaller groups. It is unusual for these to achieve a publication quantity sufficient for the results to be reliable and stable. It is also important that analyses methods do not create undesirable incentives for publication and verification behaviour, and one expressed intention with bibliometric analyses within Karolinska Institutet/Region Stockholm is that verification of a publication should never be counterproductive for an individual researcher. With good knowledge of the limitations existing at the level of the individual, certain bibliometric measures can also be used to supplement visual inspection of a publication list.