From Risk Measures to Research Measures

TL;DR

This paper introduces Scientific Research Measures (SRM), a new family of performance metrics for evaluating scientific research quality, based on risk measure theory, aiming to address limitations of existing bibliometric indices.

Contribution

The paper proposes a novel, flexible, and calibrated framework for research evaluation using risk measure theory, improving upon traditional bibliometric indices.

Findings

SRMs are coherent and share structural properties.

SRMs can be tailored to different scientific communities.

They encompass several existing indices within a unified framework.

Abstract

In order to evaluate the quality of the scientific research, we introduce a new family of scientific performance measures, called Scientific Research Measures (SRM). Our proposal originates from the more recent developments in the theory of risk measures and is an attempt to resolve the many problems of the existing bibliometric indices. The SRM that we introduce are based on the whole scientist's citation record and are: coherent, as they share the same structural properties; flexible to fit peculiarities of different areas and seniorities; granular, as they allow a more precise comparison between scientists, and inclusive, as they comprehend several popular indices. Another key feature of our SRM is that they are planned to be calibrated to the particular scientific community. We also propose a dual formulation of this problem and explain its relevance in this context.