The use of bibliometrics to measure research performance in education sciences

This paper uses bibliometric data to investigate the research performance of Swiss professors in the field of education sciences. The analyses are based on two separate databases: Web of Science and Google Scholar. A comparison of the various indicators used to measure research performance (quantity of publications and citation impact) from the two data sources indicates highly positive correlations between all of them, to a greater or lesser degree. At the same time, there is evidence that significant individual factors that would serve to explain the great variance in research performance can be identified only if the Web of Science is used as a benchmark of research performance. However, the Web of Science inclusion policy is associated with certain issues that put some research authors at a disadvantage. Therefore, problems currently exist in regard to both citation databases when used to benchmark individual research performance: Web of Science adopts a selective approach, but some of the criteria employed are problematic. Google Scholar on the other hand is so inclusive that it is virtually impossible to identify explanatory variables for the existing major individual differences in research performance. (DIPF/Orig.