Informetrics for librarians: Describing their important role in the evaluation process

Abstract

Librarians are playing a secondary role in the process of evaluating research activities, usually as auxiliary providers of raw data extracted from pre-selected sources. Given the subjective nature of the decision committees, there is a strong need for unbiased and objective procedures guaranteed by independent professionals. A neutral, comprehensive, modern, quantitative approach guided by academic librarians is proposed, including closeness to applicants, anonymity of their identities in the reports, contextualization (academic age, gender, and discipline) of data, usage of relative non-central values with indication of thresholds, and incorporation of new bibliometric and non-bibliometric sources.

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