Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the potential of altmetric and webometric indicators to aid with funding agencies’ evaluations of their funding schemes. Design/methodology/approach – This paper analyses a range of altmetric and webometric indicators in terms of suitability for funding scheme evaluations, compares them to traditional indicators and reports some statistics derived from a pilot study with Wellcome Trust-associated publications. Findings – Some alternative indicators have advantages to usefully complement scientometric data by reflecting a different type of impact or through being available before citation data. Research limitations/implications – The empirical part of the results is based on a single case study and does not give statistical evidence for the added value of any of the indicators. Practical implications – A few selected alternative indicators can be used by funding agencies as part of their funding scheme evaluations if they are processed in ways that enable comparisons between data sets. Their evidence value is only weak, however. Originality/value – This is the first analysis of altmetrics or webometrics from a funding scheme evaluation perspective.
Highlights
Large funding agencies evaluate the effectiveness of their funding decisions, and the impact of the work they fund, through a combination of qualitative methodologies and quantitative evaluations
An organisation may wish to compare the performance of their different funding schemes in order to judge whether its present strategy is producing the maximum impact on its investment
This study explores a variety of alternative indicators, provides guidelines for research funding scheme evaluations and reports a pilot study of the Webometric/altmetric impact of research outputs produced by a sample of researchers supported by the Wellcome Trust
Summary
Large funding agencies evaluate the effectiveness of their funding decisions, and the impact of the work they fund, through a combination of qualitative methodologies (e.g. surveys, focus groups) and quantitative evaluations (e.g. citation analysis). An organisation may wish to compare the performance of their different funding schemes in order to judge whether its present strategy is producing the maximum impact on its investment. They may evaluate new funding schemes to inform decisions regarding whether they should stop, continue or expand. The full terms of this licence may be seen at: http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/3.0/legalcode
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