Weighing the Kilo-authors: How Particle Physics is Affecting Evaluations [NWB'2016 presentation slides]

Particle physics collaborations are a challenge to how we are doing bibliometrics calculations. The World University Rankings’ decision to exclude physics “kilo-author” collaborations with over 1,000 authors from the overall 2015-2016 university rankings reflects this situation (Ross, 2015). On a national or institutional level, these kilo-author contributions are usually treated as annoying anomalies. Yet it is fairly easy to quantify and visualize these publications.In this contribution, the focus is in particle physics collaborations by University of Helsinki. What is the share of kilo-authored papers? How do these affect the number of collaborating institutions? What do these collaborations look like in VOSviewer visualizations? How much do they distort the evaluation of overlapping research areas like astronomy? Data from the most recent evaluation of University of Helsinki publications (Forsman et al. 2014) and current publication data from the UH Pure research database TUHAT are used. There is one Finnish university with 13.2% of all citations coming from particle physics collaborations. What about the other Finnish universities? Looking beyond these problems, what do the particle physicists themselves expect from bibliometrics? A brief case study of the publications of the sub-kilo CDF collaboration (~400 authors) is presented.ReferencesRoss, D. (September 30, 2015). “Big science: sizing up a colossus.” Times Higher Education Forsman, M., Nane, T., & Noyons, E. (2014). Research performance analysis for the University of Helsinki 2005-2012/13 CWTS B.V., Leiden University.