Adjusted Count, Complete Count, and Straight Count: Does it Matter when Appraising Research Performance? A Case Study of LIS Research in Post-Apartheid South Africa

Abstract

Counting of publications and citations is the fundamental yet important technique used in bibliometric/informetric measurements of research performance. Informetricians are however divided on the most appropriate method of counting publications and citations as a means of assessing the authors, institutions and countries’ research output and citation impact, respectively. This paper reports on the results generated from a case study of the LIS researchers’ output using three methods of publications count, namely, adjusted count (A_c), complete count (C_c) and straight count (S_c). Using data extracted from the Library, Information Science and Technology Abstracts (LISTA) database, the study found that there are differences in the number of articles generated in each counting method per author, as well as in the authors’ rankings. The study concludes that in informetric studies, the method of counting chosen for purposes of assessing the performance of researchers matters as each method produces different results. The study recommends that the choice of the counting method should largely depend on the purpose for which the informetric study is being conducted.