Towards ethical approach in Scientometrics

SUMMARY – why I run for a position in the ISSI board:

• I want ISSI to develop an ethical codex for users of scientometrics, especially producers of scientometric databases
• The codex should cover ways how companies should inform about possible discrimination of small cultural groups and cultural minorities by scientometric indices produced by their databases
• It should cover also issues of discrimination of some research fields
• It should cover also suggestions how companies should help to diminish these types of discrimination
• I want to initiate establishment of committee which would prepare first version of the ethical codex

Dear colleagues,

The text below serves to explain why I am running for position of board member of International Society for Scientometrics and Informetrics and what are my goals.

I studied pure mathematics, psychology, East Asian studies, and political science. Since the beginning of my studies, academic system turned to consider the number of citations a scholar has as the most important sign of their quality. I can see what it makes in all the disciplines I studied.

Mathematicians say that those who do abstract and complicated things, which are hard to understand, so there is not that large amount of people being able to read and cite them, are criticized for small number of citations. Political scientists complain that those who study history of local politics in a smaller country like Czechia have small number of citations compared with those who study big Western countries or something being independent of country, so they feel to be forced to leave local themes which are important for maintaining quality of the discipline. In psychology, I see that scholars pursuing indigenous themes are marginalized in comparison with those who study themes being interesting for readers from all cultures. Scholars from these indigenous communities are forced to turn to study globally-relevant issues. Marginalization of scholars pursuing indigenous themes leads to marginalization of indigenous and other smaller-culture voices in research.

Unfortunately, governments like to use database-based information to produce numbers to evaluate science. And it seems that it is inevitable they will do so. Few years ago I got an idea that smaller cultural communities might be helped if some number showing cultural uniqueness of the author would be produced from scientometric databases, so governments would have another type of numerical databased-produce information to based their science-evaluation on. I realized that there is only one field in these databases somehow connected to the fact whether the author used indigenous information – the field storing information about the language of the text. I tried to use this field to create scientometric index benefiting scholars from small cultures:

https://doi.org/10.1177/21582440211009191

I don’t think this index is good, variability of languages being indexed is low and the index is easy to fake. But language is the only such information in the currently used databases. Given the low probability of such index or something other for the same purpose will be employed by scientometric companies, other approach to help the marginalized cultures might be more suitable.

Two hundred years ago, companies might produce pollution as they wish. Currently, we have laws and ethical codexes, so it is not that easy. One hundred years ago psychologists could abuse their clients or harm them quite freely in comparison with present. It is much harder to harm and stay in the field today, because we have ethical codexes. Now, scientometric companies might produce databases where numerical outputs of these databases taken as a whole harm people from smaller cultures.  And these databases contain nothing diminishing this harm. Why? Because there is no ethical codex for these databases.

I consider it improbable that these companies will develop good ethical codex by themselves – because it would decrease their interest. It needs some international organization to develop it.

Fortunately, we have such organization – our International Society for Scientometrics and Informetrics.

So, my goal as a candidate for the board member position is to help to create such ethical codex for scientometric companies, which would be published on the webpage of our society.

My time is limited and I cannot know all the issues caused in various scientific fields by the current way of scientometric evaluation of research. But I think I am not the only one in the Society caring about similar issues, so there might be others who join the task and we may develop something together.

My main issue of interest is the harm caused to smaller cultures, someone other might be interested in harm to more abstract fields, another people might care about issues I am not aware about. It is hard to predict what we might find together to be good for inclusion in the ethical codex.

For example, in the case of harming smaller cultures, some scientometric measure assessing cultural rareness of concepts used in the publication might be developed using modern artificial intelligence. If AI is not capable of this yet, it might be required to promise working towards including such measures if scientometric company wishes to be considered as ethical. If not possible to develop such good measure, it might be required that every output from scientometric databases should include a link to information about which human groups might be harmed by this output. Companies might not like it, but tobacco companies also don’t like that in many countries they should include information how tobacco might harm human health.

For the development of the codex, I offer my experience with the research fields I was involved with as well as six years experience as a full-time database programmer in various companies – I don’t know how exactly are scientometric databases ran, but I might have some intuition of what is possible.

I think we should establish some committee which will create the first version of codex.

If you support my goal, please nominate me for the board member position and vote for me later.

Thank you.

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My short BIO:

Education:

MSc. – pure mathematics (2002), BA. – political science (2004), MA. – psychology (2006), PhD. – social psychology (2011) – all from Masaryk University

2011-2013 – unfinished doctoral study in Asia-Pacific studies (finished all classes), National Chengchi University

2008-2009 – Korean language – one year intensive class, Sungkyunkwan University

2009-2011 – Mandarin – 15 months of intensive classes, National Chengchi University, Central China Normal University

Work experience:

2005-2008, 2013-2016 – database programmer at various companies

Since 2016 – researcher in traffic and transportation safety

Since 2021 – assistant professor of psychology at Comenius University in Bratislava

Other Information:

2006, winner of Linkov v. the Czech Republic, case of European Court of Human Rights (whether governments have right to legalize crimes like murders of political opponents)

2020, Early Career Award, International Association for Cross-Cultural Psychology

2021, Distinguished Early Career Professional Contributions Award, Society for Media Psychology and Technology