West Germans Debate Research Indicators

WEST BERLIN—With a rising pro portion of the budget going to re search, the West German government has become increasingly interested in finding a way to mea sure the quality of the work it is supporting. Its growing interest has triggered a reaction from academics, who argue that such indicators do not give a complete and accurate picture of the academic landscape and that, if used to determine funding, they could disrupt or reduce the current allocation to the nation's universities. The latest development occurred at a meeting last month of the country's top university adminisrators at Schloss Reisensburg in southern West Germany. Organized by psychologists Hans-Dieter Daniel and Rudolf Fisch from the University of Konstantz, it reflected the social science origins of studies on science indicators in this country. The meeting took place during the same week that Heinz Riesenhuber, minister of research and technology, announced that federal R&D spending will reach $32 billion by the end of the year, an increase of 48 percent since 1981. The figure would place Ger many alongside Japan at the top of rankings that measure national support for science as a proportion of gross national product, he said, with Germany's 2.9 percent top ping the 2.8 percent in the United States and the 2.3 percent for Great Britain and France. One study reported at Reisensburg came from Roswitha Sehringer, Peter Weingart and Matthias Winterhager. With sup port from the federal government and data provided by the Institute for Scientific Information in Philadelphia (parent company for THE SCIENTIST) and Computer Horizons Inc. of New Jersey, the three have been using co-citation and cluster analysis to assess West German contributions in the field of mathematics. The group found that German authors have contributed roughly 5 percent of the papers in various research areas, with its share rising as high as 21 per cent in some subspecialties. Measures of this sort are not yet used as a basis for determining re search funding in West Germany. However, the federal government's science advisory board increasingly favors the use of citation data and other indicators as a way to enhance competition for money and minds. On the other hand, the country's assembly of university presidents has strong reservations about science indicators, particularly if used to rank institutions and departments. Not Their Rules "Only those at the top of such lists—by whatever criteria—could hope for increases in funds and for obtaining positions, buildings, equipment," said assembly president Theodor Berchem shortly be fore the Reisensburg conference. "All others would be forced to ad just their performance criteria accordingly, which could have ad verse consequences." Urging that scientometrics not be used to rank campuses and departments, Berchem pointed out that universities could not write the rules of such a game, adapt to them or respond appropriately. Universities are unable to raise salaries to reward individuals, he said, because of public service wage scales. They cannot select their students, he added, nor raise fees. Moreover, Parliament determines their overall budget. Taking the opposite side at Reisensburg was Heinz Heckhaus en, professor of psychology at the Max Planck Institute for Psycho logical. Research in Munich and chairman of the science advisory board. Heckhausen argued that the German university system and scientists within it had developed "a substantial capability for self-immunization over this issue and that academic administrators were "not very brave" in wanting to cover up differences in institutional performance. Facing growing criticism over its efforts to resist scientometrics, the academic fraternity has begun to alter its tactics. In Reisensburg, assembly vice president Karl Alewell argued against citation-based ranking procedures, not because of the difficulty of acting upon the results but because such assessment might mislead the public. Alewell, president of the University of Giessen, argued that "qualitative evaluation" was far more sensible than were tables and data reflecting "an inadequate reduction of complexity." His talk drew considerable criticism. Dieter Sadowski from the University of Trier drew a comparison with business to scold Alewell and others op posed to the use of such information. "Do you mean to say that large corporations should substitute qualitative descriptions of the financial year for their annual balance sheets containing facts and figures," he said, "just because reality is complex?" Sietmann writes on science policy from West Berlin.

West Germans Debate Research Indicators

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