Evaluating the quality of research activities: Investigating into the uniqueness

Abstract

Today, the research activities of scientists and research organizations is estimated through the informetrical methods (bibliometrics) with absolute and relative indicators based on the number of publications and their citations in scientometric databases. The leading authors and research organizations are given grants and awards, become international laureates, get financial support or other dividends. The authors argue that the method of research activities evaluation influences the authors’ behavior and increases plagiarism, rigged citation and academic dishonesty.The fraud practices misrepresent the estimations of research activities quality and the current status of a discipline and publication activities. The problem is analyzed; simultaneous use of bibliometric methods and most advanced scientific methods of modern methods of defining writing styles is suggested as a solution. The authors emphasize that traditionally libraries are meant to educate, to popularize knowledge and to inform. Today, they have to go into non-traditional functions, i.e. to support linguistic research and to build linguistic corpora. This would prevent manipulations when estimating publication activities with bibliometric methods and would promote academic honesty in academic practices.