A scientometric model for the assessment of strength and weakness of scientific disciplines

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to construct a model for measuring the strength and weakness of individual disciplines. Design/methodology/approach The model is developed based on the balanced approach. The model is tested on Iranian and Malaysian social sciences publications between 1991‐2008 as a case study. Findings The result indicates that the differences in rankings for measures of publication output, citation distribution, and mean observed citation rate are large, which justifies the use of the scientific power index which is introduced in this paper. Originality/value Scientific power index proposes an objective mode of measuring performance at an aggregate level that will allow a comparison of individual fields within different disciplinary areas like technological sciences, medicine, natural science, social sciences, and humanities at national or global levels. The disciplinary characterization of national research efforts identifies the mainstream and dominant scientific fields, thus the developed index can be important tool for science policy.

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