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6 Becoming Metric-Wise

and related indicators (Egghe, 2006a,b,c; Jin et al., 2007). Indicators play
also an important role in world rankings of universities, such as the
Shanghai Academic Ranking of World Universities, the Times Higher
Education World Universities rankings (in short: THE rankings), the
Leiden ranking or the Cybermetrics Web Ranking. For more details on
university rankings, we refer to Chapter 8, Research evaluation.
As the Web is a large and omnipresent network, it is no surprise that
the use of network techniques is on the rise (Otte & Rousseau, 2002). Of
course, we may not forget that citations as well as collaborations create a
network between scientists, journals, countries and so on. In this global-
ized, networked world, studies related to all forms of networking, collabo-
ration and diffusion of ideas gain more and more significance. These huge
networks need special visualization tools, making visualization a hot sub-
field of informetrics (Chen, 1999, 2003, 2004; Boyack et al., 2005, 2006;
van Eck & Waltman, 2007; Garfield, 2009; Klavans & Boyack, 2009; Yang
et al., 2009). It has turned out that so-called maps of science (Boyack et al.,
2005), showing the relative positions of scientific fields with respect to each
other, are remarkably stable. This stability allows to “overlay” publications
or references produced for a specific purpose against the background of a
representation of global science (Rafols et al., 2010).
Managers and colleagues in the field of management science not only
use informetric data and indicators for research evaluation and planning,
but use the same techniques in patent and innovation studies (Gao &
Guan, 2009; Guan & Gao, 2009). In this context one uses the term
patentometrics. Similarly, innovation and knowledge transfer studies, e.g.,
between industry, government and academia, the so-called triple helix
(Etzkowitz & Leydesdorff, 1995), make use of performance metrics
(Independent Expert Group on Open Innovation and Knowledge
Transfer, 2014).

1.3 INSTRUMENTS

This section explains—at least from a particular point of view—why a
book like this is necessary. The point we want to make about biblio-
metrics and informetrics is that one should not be satisfied with artefacts,
but that one needs real instruments. What is meant by this? In order to
perform research and research evaluations, instruments are needed. But
what is an instrument? An instrument can be defined as an artefact plus a
mental scheme (Vygotski, 1978; Drijvers & Gravemeijer, 2004). An