Resumen

RICKER, Martin; HERNANDEZ, Héctor M  y  DALY, Douglas C.   Measuring scientists’ performance: a view from organismal biologist. INCI [online]. 2009, vol.34, n.11, pp.830-835. ISSN 0378-1844.

Increasingly, academic evaluations quantify performance in science by giving higher rank to scientists (as well as journals and institutions) who publish more articles and have more citations. In Mexico, for example, a centralized federal agency uses such bibliometric statistics for evaluating the performance of all Mexican scientists. In this article we caution against using this form of evaluation as an almost exclusive tool of measuring and comparing scientists’ performance. We argue that from an economic viewpoint, maximizing the number of journal articles and their citations does not necessarily correspond to the preferences and needs of society. The traditional peer review process is much better suited for that purpose, and we propose "rule-based peer review" for evaluating a large number of scientists.

Palabras clave : Academic Evaluation ; Citation Statistics ; Peer Review .