Bibliometrics and Research Evaluation: Uses and Abuses,

Described by one reviewer as a “manifesto,” Bibliometrics and Research Evaluation: Uses and Abuses has a clear thesis: “Bibliometrics have no real scientific validity and rarely measure what they say they do” (viii). Author Yves Gingras, who also translated the work from its original French, is a professor and department chair at the University of Quebec, Montreal. Gingras confesses that a French reviewer of the original edition identified fifty articles that more deeply describe the issues addressed in this book. But he uses that critique to specify that this work – what Gingras calls an “opinionated essay” – is “aimed at researchers and managers of research,” and is meant to be easily digestible rather than a deep-dive into any one aspect of research evaluation. This work has been reviewed numerous times, but the review that follows will focus on its utility for librarians, specifically academic librarians, as the book’s content applies strictly to academia. Gingras notes libraries’ historic importance to the development of bibliometrics, but omits their involvement elsewhere. Libraries are the reason bibliometrics were first used in modern academia, with librarians utilizing them for collection development decision-making. In Chapter 4, Gingras helpfully describes and compares the major data sources used in bibliometrics: Web of Science (at the time, a Thomson Reuters product, now a Clarivate product), Scopus (an Elsevier product), and Google Scholar. Gingras here demonstrates his unfamiliarity with current issues in librarianship when he briefly mentions that a downside to Web of Science and Scopus is that “they are not free – in fact, they can even be quite expensive” (64). Although this is a short work and Gingras makes clear his focus is not on libraries, it is a glaring omission to so casually mention the high price of databases when companies like Thomson Reuters/Clarivate and Elsevier are, in fact, creating a worldwide crisis in academia and academic libraries in particular. In addition to Gingras’ stated audience, Bibliometrics and Research Evaluation would serve as an excellent text for librarians who teach information literacy, publishing models, and research management. Chapters 3 and 4, which look at the proliferation and evaluation of research evaluation, are particularly useful. However, as alluded to above, librarians should supplement it with other readings to properly understand both the role of libraries in academic publishing and how academia can address the misuse of research evaluations and current publishing models.