Shapley values for assessing research production and impact of schools and scholars

Abstract

Performance measures of individual scholars tend to ignore the context. I introduce contextualised metrics: cardinal and ordinal pseudo-Shapley values that measure a scholar’s contribution to (perhaps power over) her own school and her market value to other schools should she change job. I illustrate the proposed measures with business scholars and business schools in Ireland. Although conceptually superior, the power indicators imply a ranking of scholars within a school that is identical to the corresponding conventional performance measures. The market value indicators imply an identical ranking within schools and a very similar ranking between schools. The ordinal indices further contextualise performance measures and thus deviate further from the corresponding conventional indicators. As the ordinal measures are discontinuous by construction, a natural classification of scholars emerges. Averaged over schools, the market values offer little extra information over the corresponding production and impact measures. The ordinal power measure indicates the robustness or fragility of an institution’s place in the rank order. It is only weakly correlated with the concentration of publications and citations.