Scientific Research Units Research Articles

Citation analysis for measuring the value of scientific publications: quality assessment tool or comedy of errors?

The basic concepts of citation analysis and journal impact factors are discussed in the light of quality assessment of scientific publications, individual scientists and research units. The major controversies concerning this topic are addressed: technical limitations, database selectivity, time and discipline-related biases, language and publication type biases, multiple authorship merits and citing motivations. Both positive and negative aspects are put into perspective. The authors conclude that citation analysis, even when based on journal impact factors, can be a worthwhile criterion for evaluating publication records of individual scientists or research units, as long as some of the problems discussed are sufficiently taken into account. However, this conclusion in no way implies that citation analysis may be considered as the one and only evaluation criterion.

Draw Up Enrollment Plans According to Social Needs

In college enrollment, some of our comrades used to decide on the enrollment plan according to the college's specialties, teaching forces, teaching facilities, and housing conditions and give little consideration to the needs of society because of insufficient information. Thus, to a certain extent, the plan is formulated blindly. This contradiction is manifested conspicuously in the graduates' job assignment, with the result that they cannot put to use their strength or what they have studied, causing a waste of talent. Therefore, to upgrade the disciplines and specialties in order to train high-quality personnel to meet the needs of the national economic departments and scientific research units in accordance with the general task of the new period and the situation of the new technological revolution in the world is an important task facing institutions of higher learning.

Toward an Integration of Organization Research and Practice: A Contingency Study of Bureaucratic Control and Performance in Scientific Settings

This is an equally coauthored study. We would like tothankJan Beyer, Carlos Kruytbosch, Anthony Cobb, and three anonymousASQ reviewers fortheir helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper. Portions of this paper were presented at the Albany Conference on Organization Theory and Public Policy, Albany, NY, April 1982. Three characteristics of utilizable research practical relevance, applicability of findings, and specificity -were identified and used as a basis for assessing the usefulness of the results from this study. The focus of the study was the contingency effect of bureaucratic control on organizational performance, and the organizations studied were scientific research units in universities. It was hypothesized that bureaucratic control, exercised through influence from national science policy on the choice of unit research themes, will have a positive effect on research-unit productivity in scientific fields with highly developed paradigms. This effect, however, will decline as paradigm development decreases and will become negative in fields with less developed paradigms. Data from an international sample (N = 288) of academic research units supported the hypothesis. Implications for designing national science policy to foster research productivity are discussed, and suggestions are made for the conduct of organization research that has practical utility for decision makers.