Research Performance Management in a CRIS Environment: Does Research Evaluation Affect Publishing Activity?

Abstract

In this article we describe the results from a study of researchers’ publishing activity at one Danish university before and after the implementation of a national research evaluation system (RES). More specifically, we investigate the extent to which researchers at Aalborg University publish in prestigious journals in a period of ten years.

Different yardsticks were used to measure the prestige of publications; an internal yardstick and several external yardsticks. The internal yardstick has been developed as part of the Bibliometric Research Indicator, namely the Authority List of Journals. The external yardsticks are the share of publications in Web of Science and Scopus and their measures of prestige, namely the Journal Impact Factor (JIF) and the Source Normalised Impact per Paper (SNIP).

The results regarding the publishing activity as measured by the national Danish RES show that the share of publications without level decreases, the share of publications in ‘normal’ (level 1) journals increases and the share of publications in ‘prestigious’ (level 2) journals is status quo. The results regarding the publishing activity measured in relation to external yardsticks show that Aalborg University has had a relative larger increase than Denmark and Norway in the amount of Scopus publications. Aalborg University has also had a larger increase than Denmark in the amount of WOS publications. The results also show that Aalborg University has published in slightly more prestigious journals if measured by JIF and SNIP. However, we do not have evidence supporting the assumption underlying the implementation of the Bibliometric Research Indicator, namely an increase in publications in prestigious journals.