Chinese Academic Library Research Evaluation Services

Abstract

A web content analysis and case study were employed to analyze the research evaluation service practices and activities in 12 Chinese academic libraries – Peking University, Tsinghua University, Beijing Institute of Technology, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Fudan University, Tongji University, Zhejiang University, Wuhan University, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, East China Normal University, Shandong Normal University, and Donghua University. Specifically, the following aspects were examined: names of the services, service type, user training, support platforms, staffing, partnerships, marketing, and publicity and the time when the services were developed. The study found that a majority of Chinese academic libraries engaged in a variety of research evaluation service activities from article/journal/author assessments to patent assessments. Most research evaluation services were expanding from basic services such as citation searches, sci-tech novelty searches, and scholarly output statistical analyses to higher level services such as subject evaluations, subject/field trend analyses, and talent evaluations. Consequently, the user training, support platforms, staffing, partnerships, and marketing and publicity related to research evaluation services are increasing. The study also found that research evaluation services in Chinese academic libraries are based mainly on bibliometrics, and many of the services are being gradually automated and service management is being gradually standardized and institutionalized, while service effectiveness is gradually moving towards productization and specialization. However, these services do not yet extend to all aspects of the research impact cycle. Recommendations from the study include: incorporating new metrics and new types of research output into the current research evaluation systems; using unique author identifier profile systems to link research evaluation data systems and constructing a research impact cycle-oriented service system.