Testing bibliometric indicators by their prediction of scientists promotions

We have developed a method to obtain robust quantitative bibliometric indicators for several thousand scientists. This allows us to study the dependence of bibliometric indicators (such as number of publications, number of citations, Hirsch index...) on the age, position, etc. of CNRS scientists. Our data suggests that the normalized h index (h divided by the career length) is not constant for scientists with the same productivity but differents ages. We also compare the predictions of several bibliometric indicators on the promotions of about 600 CNRS researchers. Contrary to previous publications, our study encompasses most disciplines, and shows that no single indicator is the best predictor for all disciplines. Overall, however, the Hirsch index h provides the least bad correlations, followed by the number of papers published. It is important to realize however that even h is able to recover only half of the actual promotions. The number of citations or the mean number of citations per paper are definitely not good predictors of promotion.

Scientists who engage with society perform better academically

Most scientific institutions acknowledge the importance of opening the so-called ivory tower of academic research through popularization, industrial collaboration or teaching. However, little is known about the actual openness of scientific institutions and how their proclaimed priorities translate into concrete measures. This paper gives an idea of some actual practices by studying three key points: the proportion of researchers who are active in wider dissemination, the academic productivity of these scientists, and the institutional recognition of their wider dissemination activities in terms of their careers. We analyze extensive data about the academic production, career recognition and teaching or public/industrial outreach of several thousand of scientists, from many disciplines, from Frances Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique. We find that, contrary to what is often suggested, scientists active in wider dissemination are also more active academically. However, their dissemination activities have almost no impact (positive or negative) on their careers.