ABOUT KB

About KB
The Compe­tence Network for Bibliometrics
Organi­za­tion
Histo­ry of the KB
Adviso­ry council

THE COMPETENCE NETWORK FOR BIBLIOMETRICS

Gover­nance forms in science have changed in the last 20 years. Increased competive­ness, inter­na­tion­al­iza­tion, output-orient­ed control mecha­nisms, evalu­a­tion, growth of grant-based funding, public account­abil­i­ty, quali­ty manage­ment, insti­tu­tion­al profil­ing and strate­gic planning of research are some of the keywords of what is often summa­rized as new public management.

Such a steer­ing system not only needs valid infor­ma­tion on input, output and process parame­ters on differ­ent levels but also requires a careful analy­sis of the condi­tions of the produc­tion of knowl­edge, changes in them and the results of inter­ven­tions. Given this, not only science policy but also actors such as funding agencies, journal publish­ers, the econo­my, members of civil society and the gener­al public are reliant on scien­to­met­ric infor­ma­tion that is subject to regular verification.

One of the central sources of infor­ma­tion is the system of scien­tif­ic commu­ni­ca­tion through which the dissem­i­na­tion and valida­tion of schol­ar­ly knowl­edge is organized. Biblio­met­rics uses the data on authors, journals, insti­tu­tions, funding organi­za­tions and topics that arise from the commu­ni­ca­tion process and trans­forms them into indica­tors, struc­tur­al displays and indexes.

The KB for German Science funded since late 2008 by the Feder­al Ministry for Research, Technol­o­gy and Space (BMFTR) has construct­ed a quali­ty controlled in-house data infra­struc­ture, based on the databas­es Scopus (Elsevi­er), Web of Science (Clari­vate), and newly OpenAlex (OurRe­search), for these purpos­es and uses it for the devel­op­ment and advance­ment of analyt­i­cal methods and indicators.

The objec­tives of the KB are

  • creation, devel­op­ment and curation of a quali­ty-assured data infra­struc­ture for biblio­met­ric applications
  • research into appro­pri­ate biblio­met­ric methods and indicators
  • inves­ti­ga­tions on effects and meaning­ful­ness of biblio­met­ric results
  • to support of young biblio­met­ric researchers
  • to offer services, mainly biblio­met­ric analy­ses, and counselling for the appli­ca­tion and inter­pre­ta­tions of biblio­met­ric information.

The activ­i­ties of the KB are coordi­nat­ed and support­ed by its admin­is­tra­tive office, which is run by DZHW.

This project is funded by BMBF (Feder­al Ministry of Educa­tion and Research, Germany) as part of the WiHo programme. Grant number 16WIK2101A.

Organi­za­tion

The partners of the project “Open KB”

Philipp Mayr is a team leader (Infor­ma­tion & Data Retrieval) at the GESIS — Leibniz-Insti­tute for the Social Sciences depart­ment Knowl­edge Technolo­gies for the Social Sciences (KTS). In the winter semes­ter 2020/2021, he admin­is­trat­ed the W3 profes­sor­ship “Scien­tif­ic Infor­ma­tion Analyt­ics” at the Univer­si­ty of Göttin­gen, Insti­tute of Comput­er Science. He has been a visit­ing profes­sor for knowl­edge repre­sen­ta­tion at Univer­si­ty of Applied Sciences in Darmstadt, Depart­ment of Infor­ma­tion Science & Engineer­ing during 2009–2011. Philipp Mayr received his PhD in applied infor­met­rics and infor­ma­tion retrieval from the Berlin School of Library and Infor­ma­tion Science at Humboldt Univer­si­ty Berlin in 2009. To date, he has been award­ed substan­tial research funding (PI, Co-PI) from nation­al and European funding agencies. Philipp Mayr was Gener­al Chair of the 41st European Confer­ence on Infor­ma­tion Retrieval (ECIR 2019) in April 2019, Programme Chair of the 22nd ACM/IEEE Joint Confer­ence on Digital Libraries (JCDL 2022) in June 2022, Programme Chair of the 13th Inter­na­tion­al Confer­ence on Social Infor­mat­ics (SocIn­fo 2022) in October 2022. He has published in top confer­ences and presti­gious journals in the areas infor­met­rics, infor­ma­tion retrieval and digital libraries. His research group “Infor­ma­tion and Data Retrieval” is working on methods and techniques of inter­ac­tive infor­ma­tion and dataset retrieval and maintains and further devel­ops infor­ma­tion systems for the social sciences. He is the main organiz­er of the Inter­na­tion­al Workshop on Biblio­met­ric-enhanced Infor­ma­tion Retrieval (BIR) and Schol­ar­ly Document Process­ing workshop series.
Philip­p’s research inter­ests include: inter­ac­tive IR, schol­ar­ly recom­men­da­tion systems, non-textu­al ranking, biblio­met­ric and scien­to­met­ric methods, applied infor­met­rics, science models in digital libraries, knowl­edge repre­sen­ta­tion, seman­tic technolo­gies, user studies, infor­ma­tion behavior.

Bernhard Mitter­maier studied chemistry at the Univer­si­ty of Ulm (diplo­ma 1986) and earned his PhD in Analyt­i­cal Chemistry in 2001. After a postdoc at the Jülich Research Center in the BMBF project MOBINET, he moved in 2004 to the Central Library of FZJ, initial­ly as head of the User Services Depart­ment. He studied library and infor­ma­tion science at Humboldt Univer­si­ty of Berlin part-time (M.A. (LIS) 2006). In 2008, Bernhard Mitter­maier was second­ed to the BMBF (Depart­ment of Funda­men­tal Questions of the Science System) as part of a staff exchange. Since October 2008, Bernhard Mitter­maier has been heading the Central Library of the FZJ. His main areas of work include:
  • Open Access, includ­ing the design, devel­op­ment, and opera­tion of the Open Access Monitor Germany
  • License negoti­a­tions for the Jülich Research Center, the Helmholtz Associ­a­tion, and on a nation­al level, e.g., in the DEAL project
  • Biblio­met­rics, includ­ing in the Compe­tence Network on Biblio­met­rics and in the context of doctor­al supervision.

Bernhard Mitter­maier is active­ly involved in the scien­tif­ic commu­ni­ty in various ways—for instance, in working groups and task forces of the Alliance of Science Organ­i­sa­tions’ prior­i­ty initia­tive on digital infor­ma­tion provi­sion and the DEAL group; as editor of the journal “Journal of Large-Scale Research Facil­i­ties”; as a review­er for the DFG and various scien­tif­ic journals; and as a member of the scien­tif­ic adviso­ry boards of ZB MED and the Open Access Branden­burg Network­ing and Compe­tence Centre.

ORCID
Publi­ca­tions

Chris­tine Rimmert began her career at the tax office in Güter­sloh, having quali­fied as a Diplom-Finanzwirtin (FH) in fiscal econom­ics. Tax law, howev­er, was not the last word on the matter: she went on to study Mathe­mat­ics with a minor in Psychol­o­gy at Biele­feld Univer­si­ty, gradu­at­ing in 2010, and subse­quent­ly joined the univer­si­ty’s Biblio­met­rics Group — at that time under the leader­ship of Dr. Matthias Winter­hager. It was there that she first came into contact with the KB (former­ly ‘Kompe­tenzzen­trum Bibliome­trie’), which had been found­ed two years earli­er, in 2008. Along­side her endur­ing passion for dogs and garden­ing, she discov­ered a fondness for databas­es, data inves­ti­ga­tion, process­ing and coding, and accord­ing­ly took up the work on insti­tu­tion­al disam­bigua­tion, among other projects of the group. In 2018, in search of new adven­tures, she left the group to join the start-up Semalytix as a data engineer in the team of Dr. Sebas­t­ian Walter, gaining a wealth of valuable experi­ence and meeting a number of great people along the way. When FIZ Karlsruhe adver­tised a project manage­ment position in the Biblio­met­rics Group of Dr. Thomas Bausen­wein in 2022, she returned to the KB — this time from the ‘more techni­cal side’ — and took over the project lead in 2026 upon Dr. Thomas Bausen­wein’s retire­ment, support­ed daily by her two wonder­ful rescue dogs.

Dr. Stephan Stahlschmidt studied econom­ics and statis­tics in Heidel­berg, Madrid, and Berlin. From 2008 to 2010, he worked as a research associate on an exter­nal­ly funded project for the Feder­al Crimi­nal Police Office (BKA) at the Berlin School of Econom­ics and Law. Subse­quent­ly, from 2011 to 2015, he was employed at the Centre for Social Invest­ment and Innova­tion (CSI) at Heidel­berg Univer­si­ty, where he focused on quanti­ta­tive impact measure­ment. Since 2015, he has worked as a research associate in the field of biblio­met­rics at the German Centre for Higher Educa­tion Research and Science Studies (DZHW). He is respon­si­ble for various commis­sioned biblio­met­ric projects and research initia­tives at the DZHW and has taught cours­es on biblio­met­ric data quali­ty at the annual European Summer School for Scien­to­met­rics since 2021. Since 2020, he has headed the office of the Biblio­met­rics Compe­tence Network.

PD Dr. Niels Taubert is a sociol­o­gist and head of the Biblio­met­rics research group at the Insti­tute for Science Studies at Biele­feld University.

His research focus­es on the sociol­o­gy of science and technol­o­gy, as well as scien­tif­ic commu­ni­ca­tion systems and digital infra­struc­tures. His main areas of exper­tise include biblio­met­rics, open access, and the trans­for­ma­tion of schol­ar­ly publish­ing. In his research, he combines empir­i­cal analy­ses with the study of insti­tu­tion­al and organi­za­tion­al changes in science. Taubert has many years of experi­ence in leading exter­nal­ly funded research projects and in inter­dis­ci­pli­nary research manage­ment. From 2013 to 2015, he was the scien­tif­ic coordi­na­tor of the inter­dis­ci­pli­nary working group “Future of the Scien­tif­ic Commu­ni­ca­tion System” at the Berlin-Branden­burg Acade­my of Sciences. In 2019, he received his habil­i­ta­tion in sociol­o­gy at the Univer­si­ty of Kassel; in 2005 he got his PhD at Biele­feld Univer­si­ty in 2005.

Repre­sen­ta­tives of the member organizations:

  • Deutsches Zentrum für Hochschul- und Wissenschafts­forschung (DZHW):
    Dr. Stephan Stahlschmidt | Marion Schmidt
  • Fraun­hofer-Insti­tut für System- und Innova­tions­forschung (ISI):
    Dr. Rainer Frietsch | Dr. Henning Kroll
  • Insti­tute for Inter­dis­ci­pli­nary Studies of Science (I²SoS), Univer­sität Bielefeld:
    Dr. Niels Taubert | Christo­pher Lenke
  • Leibniz-Insti­tut für Infor­ma­tion­sin­fra­struk­tur FIZ Karlsruhe (FIZ):
    Chris­tine Rimmert | Dr. Sebas­t­ian Wanisch
  • Forschungszen­trum Jülich GmbH (FZJ):
    Dr. Bernhard Mitter­maier | Andreas Meier
  • Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, vertreten durch die Max-Planck-Digital Library (MPDL), München:
    Margit Palzen­berg­er | Katja Heidbach
  • GESIS – Leibniz-Insti­tut für Sozial­wis­senschaften, Mannheim/Köln:
    Dr. Philipp Mayr-Schlegel | Jack Culbert
  • ZBW Leibniz-Infor­ma­tion­szen­trum Wirtschaft:
    Prof. Dr. Isabel­la Peters | Steffen Lemke
  • ZEW – Leibniz-Zentrum für Europäis­che Wirtschafts­forschung GmbH:
    Prof. Dr. Hanna Hotten­rott | Dr. Bastian Krieger
  • Chris­t­ian-Albrechts-Univer­sität zu Kiel:
    Prof. Dr. Carsten Schulz | Tetyana Melnychuk
  • Univer­sität Kassel, Inter­na­tion­al Center for Higher Educa­tion Research (INCHER):
    Prof. Dr. Guido Bünstorf | Dr. Johannes König
  • Humboldt-Univer­sität zu Berlin, Insti­tut für Biblio­theks- und Informationswissenschaft:
    Prof. Dr. Martin Reinhart | Dr. Stephan Gauch
  • RWTH Aachen, Human Technol­o­gy Center (HumTech):
    Prof. Dr. Stefan Böschen
  • Gottfried Wilhelm-Leibniz-Univer­sität Hannover, Leibniz Forschungszen­trum Wissenschaft und Gesellschaft:
    Prof. Dr. Anna Kosmützky
  • Technis­che Univer­sität Berlin, Fachge­bi­et Sozial­wis­senschaftliche Wissenschafts- und Technikforschung:
    Prof. Dr. Jochen Gläser
  • Georg-August-Univer­sität Göttin­gen, Nieder­säch­sis­che Staats- und Univer­sitäts­bib­lio­thek Göttingen:
    Naiko Jahn
  • Fraun­hofer-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der angewandten Forschung (IRB):
    Eric Retzlaff
  • Fraun­hofer-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der angewandten Forschung (INT):
    Dr. Miloš Jovanović | Dr. Marcus John
  • Friedrich-Schiller-Univer­sität Jena:
    Prof. Dr. Uwe Cantner | Dr. Nils Grashof
  • Technis­che Univer­sität Ilmenau, Insti­tut für Volkswirtschaftslehre:
    Prof. Dr. Thomas Grebel | Xijie Zhang
  • Technis­che Univer­sität München:
    Prof. Dr. Hanna Hotten­rott | Dr. Thomas Schaper
  • Geschäftsstelle der Expertenkom­mis­sion Forschung und Innova­tion (EFI):
    Dr. Johannes Stiller | Dr. Helge Dauchert

Chair­man­ship of the assem­bly of member organizations:

Head:
Profes­sor Dr. Wolfram Horstmann (Leibniz-Insti­tut für Infor­ma­tion­sin­fra­struk­tur FIZ Karlsruhe (FIZ)) | Repre­sen­ta­tive: Profes­sor Uwe Cantner (Univer­sität Jena)

Admin­is­tra­tive office:

Dr. Stephan Stahlschmidt; Marion Schmidt

German Centre for Higher Educa­tion Research and Science Studies (DZHW)
Research Area Research System and Science Dynamics
Schützen­straße 6a
10117 Berlin
kb(at)dzhw.eu

Project coordi­na­tion:

VDI/VDE Technik + Innova­tion GmbH
Stein­platz 1
10623 Berlin

Histo­ry of the KB

The KB has been funded by the feder­al ministry of educa­tion and research (BMBF) since the end of 2008. The goal of the first project phase was to create a quali­ty assured database infra­struc­ture and to make it usable for evalu­a­tion and monitor­ing. In partic­u­lar, the clean­ing and disam­bigua­tion of address data and the devel­op­ment of automat­ed proce­dures to carry out these tasks contin­u­ous­ly upon raw data deliv­ery was central.

Research projects in this phase also focussed on the exten­sion of the quali­ty assur­ance and on indica­tor devel­op­ment. Further­more, initial feasi­bil­i­ty and pilot studies were conduct­ed. Other prior­i­ties were the handling of errors and the improve­ment of the theory of biblio­met­ric measure­ment. The experi­ence and correc­tions that were gained through the appli­ca­tion of the devel­oped instru­ments were fed back into the databases.

Evalu­a­tion 2016

The project Compe­tence Centre for Biblio­met­rics was assessed by an indepen­dent expert commit­tee in 2016 on behalf the Feder­al Ministry for Educa­tion and Research. As a result the review commit­tee recom­mend­ed the contin­u­a­tion of the project in its main aspects, an exten­sion of the activ­i­ties and organi­za­tion­al changes in partic­u­lar areas.

Report of the review commit­tee (German)

Adviso­ry council

The scien­tif­ic adviso­ry council advis­es the consor­tium members in their activ­i­ties. It consists of up to five members with exper­tise in biblio­met­rics. The members are appoint­ed by the feder­al ministry of educa­tion and research (BMBF) for a period of three years.

Members

  • Prof. Dr. Stefanie Haustein (Speak­er), Univer­si­ty of Ottawa
  • Prof. Dr. Simone Fulda, Chris­t­ian-Albrechts-Univer­sität Kiel
  • Dr. Matthias Kreysing, Univer­sität Konstanz
  • Dr. Jan-Hauke Plaßmann, Minis­teri­um für Wissenschaft, Forschung und Kultur des Landes Brandenburg
  • Dr. Lars Handrich, DIW Econ