Lutz Bornmann

This was a joyful collaboration with @rhaunschild.bsky.social and @lutzb.bsky.social

Citation accuracy, citation noise, and citation bias: A foundation of citation analysis - MetaROR

Our latest article argues that citation noise "represents an [...] underexplored challenge in citation analysis".

Reviewers appreciate the fresh/innovative approach but question its conceptual underpinning: can citation accuracy be determined objectively?

👇 Read the assessment, reviews & full text

Very glad to see this collaborative work w/ Robin Haunschild and @lutzb.bsky.social published in Journal of Informetrics

"A study of gender and regional differences in scientific mobility and immobility among researchers identified as potentially talented"

Open Access here:
doi.org/10.1016/j.jo...

Shen, Z., Haunschild, R., & Bornmann, L. (2025). Document types make the difference. Journal of Informetrics, 19(4), 101738. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joi.2025.101738

The recent debate in JoI highlights a key issue often ignored in evaluation: doi.org/10.1016/j.jo... When all publication types are counted, normalized #metrics become inconsistent and misleading. But once we restrict the analysis to articles and reviews, correlations rise sharply. #bibliometrics

Is research performance related to academic freedom? A preprint co-authored with @lutzb.bsky.social conducts a large-scale empirical analysis on the national level to this question. osf.io/2mh8f #academicfreedom #AcademicFreedomIndex Short 🧵

Guest Post – Metrics Sonification of Team Size Effects on Disruptive Research - The Scholarly Kitchen Data sonification is the process of translating data into sound. Here, Lutz Bornmann and Christian Leibel present the sonified results of a recent analysis of the impact of scientific team size on inn...

scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2025/07/29/g...

doi.org/10.48550/arX...

How similar are field-normalized citation impact scores obtained from OpenAlex and three popular commercial databases? An empirical comparison based on large German universities - Scientometrics OpenAlex is a freely available bibliographic database that can be used for bibliometric studies. In this study, we compared certain field-normalized citation scores (NCS) from OpenAlex with those from...

How similar are field-normalized citation impact scores obtained from OpenAlex and three popular commercial databases? An empirical comparison based on large German universities.

link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Are groundbreaking science discoveries becoming harder to find? Researchers are arguing over whether ‘disruptive’ or ‘novel’ science is waning – and how to remedy the problem.

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Derek de Solla Price Memorial Medal | International Society for Scientometrics and Informetrics The International Society for Informetrics and Scientometrics (ISSI) is an international association of scholars and professionals active in the interdisciplinary study science of science, science com...

Prof Gunnar Sivertsen (NIFU, Norway) has been awarded the Derek de Solla Price Medal 2025 of the international journal Scientometrics.
The awarding ceremony will take place during the 20th ISSI Conference in Yerevan (Armenia) to be held on 23–27 June 2025.
www.issi-society.org/awards/derek...

Metrics sonification: The introduction of new ways to present bibliometric data using publication data of Loet Leydesdorff as an example. https://rdcu.be/eiqC4

Cover of the institute's Research Report 2021–2024. Below a header in a dark green, it features an aerial image of the Sundarbans mangrove forest and the rivers which cross it. Source: NASA, created by Jesse Allen, Earth Observatory. Wikimedia Commons.

The MPIWG’s Research Report 2021–2024 is now available online and in print!

📗 The report provides insights into the Institute’s structure and research, including our researchers and staff, projects, and publications.

🔗 bitly.cx/l3ovd

#HistSci #HistMed #EnvHist #STS #Sinology #DigitalHumanities

I am extremely happy to share. Just out in @pnas.org:

“Global subnational estimates of migration of scientists reveal large disparities in internal and international flows”

Open Access: doi.org/10.1073/pnas...
with Maciej J. Dańko, Xinyi Zhao, @ezagheni.bsky.social @mpidr.bsky.social #PAA2025

index (D). While prior studies emphasize minimum citation windows (mostly 3-5 years) for reliable citation impact measurements, the time-sensitive nature of D - which quantifies a paper' s capacity to eclipse prior knowledge - remains underexplored. [2/6 of https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.07828v1]

highly disruptive and consolidating works. The findings offer significant implications for scholarly evaluation and science policy, emphasizing the need for careful consideration of citation window length in research assessment (based on D). [6/6 of https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.07828v1]

classifications, while shorter windows (3 years) exhibit instability. Publications with >=30 references stabilize 1-3 years faster, and extreme cases (top/bottom 5% D values) become identifiable within 5 years - enabling early detection of 60-80% of [5/6 of https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.07828v1]

Hongkan Chen, Lutz Bornmann, Yi Bu: Dynamic disruption index across citation and cited references windows: Recommendations for thresholds in research evaluation https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.07828 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2504.07828 https://arxiv.org/html/2504.07828

Are quality assessments in science affected by anchoring effects? – Empirical results from a survey of authors assessing previously cited papers Many studies have investigated anchoring effects. Anchoring occurs when initial values are used by humans as starting points in assessments. We investigated the prevalence of anchoring effects in the ...

dx.plos.org/10.1371/jour...

The influence of public policy and administration expertise on policy: an empirical study Academic expertise is a key pillar of governance processes around the world. A goal of policy and public sector actors is to draw on research to improve decision making, and correspondingly, a goal…

'The influence of public policy and administration expertise on #policy: an empirical study'

New from Evidence & Policy, by @rhaunschild.bsky.social, Kate Williams & @lutzb.bsky.social:

Metrics sonification – What we can learn from listening to the output of hyperprolific academic authors - Impact of Social Sciences Bibliometric data is often communicated visually or as text, but what can we learn by listening to them via the process of metrics sonification?

👀 ICYMI: @lutzb.bsky.social & Christian Ganser explore the phenomenon of hyperprolific authors, who publish a research paper every five days, and what listening to their output metrics can tell us about ‘research productivity’.

#Citations #Bibliometrics #Academia

The attacks on science in the US raise serious concerns. With other colleagues at CWTS, we discuss how our research relates to these developments, and how we intend to monitor science at risk.

Our upcoming Open Research Seminars in May, June and July on the German Excellence Initiative, measuring disruption in science and evaluative bibliometrics in the DORA/CoARA context:

Registration is open for the esss european summer school for scientometrics! esss.info

The special track on Open Research Information at @stienid2025.bsky.social is open to submissions via the regular conference submission tool.

Metrics sonification – What we can learn from listening to the output of hyperprolific academic authors - Impact of Social Sciences Bibliometric data is often communicated visually or as text, but what can we learn by listening to them via the process of metrics sonification?

💥 New: Metrics sonification – What we can learn from listening to the output of hyperprolific academic authors

✍️ @lutzb.bsky.social & Christian Ganser #Bibliometrics #AcademicSky #DataViz

Reminder: The deadline for submissions to the 29th Annual Science and Technology Indicators Conference (STI 2025) is fast approaching!🚨

🔗 Submit your work here: auth.oxfordabstracts.com?redirect=/st...

Need more time? Just reach out at sti-enid2025@bristol.ac.uk we're happy to accommodate!

Proposal of a gold standard combining different UN SDG assignments from different data providers: doi.org/10.1007/s111... @lutzb.bsky.social Many thanks to @clarivateag.bsky.social, @elsevierconnect.bsky.social, and OSDG.ai for providing SDG assignments.

What were the death tolls from pandemics in history?

Why do nearly 45,000 scholarly papers cite themselves? While thousands of papers cite themselves, the percentage that do so is relatively low. Haunschild & Bornmann/arXiv.org While using bibliometric techniques to measure how disruptive research pa…

Why do nearly 45,000 scholarly papers cite themselves? My latest for @retractionwatch.com: retractionwatch.com/2025/03/19/p...

@lutzb.bsky.social, @mollymking.bsky.social

Catchy, clear, concise: Three-part phrases boost research paper citations Memorable ‘tripartite’ phrases in titles make studies more likely to be read and cited.

Catchy, clear, concise: three-part phrases in research-paper titles garner more citations.

Nice to know that the 'rule of three' also works for science articles. Could get irritating if over-used?

by @dalmeet.bsky.social | @nature.com

www.nature.com/articles/d41...