The competent bibliometrician-A guided tour through the scholarly and practitioner literature

Abstract

Repeated calls for responsible research metrics and professional codes of conduct in evaluative bibliometrics highlight the need to investigate which qualifications and competencies enable a proficient application of bibliometric methods and indicators. Taking competence research as a point of departure, this chapter delineates salient dimensions of professional competence in bibliometric research evaluation by reviewing a selected subset of the literature. The reviewed literature focuses on handbooks, monographs, and scholarly and practitioner articles that introduce theory and methodology of bibliometrics and showcase applications to scholars and practitioners mainly outside of the scientometric research community. The goal of the chapter is twofold: first, by structuring the presentation of the literature according to major competency dimensions, it offers a frame of reference for studying the growing and increasingly varied literature on bibliometrics in evaluative and policy contexts from the perspective of professional competencies. Second, it provides a brief theoretical reflection on the character of the "competent bibliometrician".