Page 288 - Becoming Metric Wise

280 Becoming Metric-Wise

collaboration, again notwithstanding substantial disciplinary variations.
One other result is the observation that, similar to the other sciences, sci-
entific communication in the social sciences and the humanities is evolv-
ing at a fast rate. The existence of this database and its use in a funding
formula makes it possible to study the influence of an incentive structure
on the publication behavior of scientists (Guns & Engels, 2016).
Moreover, the existence of a similar database in Norway has led to some
inter-country comparisons (Ossenblok et al., 2012).
Clearly, these investigations made it overtly clear that for evaluations
in the social sciences and humanities the use of the international databases
alone does not suffice, and may lead to biased results: less than half (44%)
of the publications in the VABB-SHW is also indexed in the WoS.
An important aspect of the VABB-SHW from a bibliometric point of
view is the inclusion of monographs, edited books and chapters in edited
books. These publication types are otherwise rarely studied. This led to
the detection of a neglected form of research collaboration through
coediting and between editors and contributing authors (Ossenblok &
Engels, 2015; Ossenblok et al., 2015).
Further information and an analysis of the VABB-SHW database can
be found in Engels et al. (2012).

8.10 HOW TO EVALUATE TOP LABS: AN EXAMPLE FROM
CHINA

Research laboratories are larger units than research groups. Moreover,
when evaluating labs one should not only take research output into
account, but one must also consider the complete infrastructure and the
level of the available personnel. As an example of factors that can be taken
into account we discuss an approach applied in China for so-called Key
Labs. More details can be found in Jin et al. (2005, 2006) and Ahlgren
et al. (2017).
The evaluation procedure is mainly qualitative and is performed by
experts according to a set of predefined quality indicators. These are sub-
divided into three groups:
Research level and contributions.
Increasing scientific capacity (including training).
Open communication and management structure.
Each of these topics includes several subaspects.