Analysis of relation between reviewers' evaluation of proposals and research performance (case study for the Georgian governmental funding organization)
Affiliations: [a] Georgian Technical University, Tbilisi, Georgia | [b] Ilia State University, Tbilisi, Georgia | [c] DolMa, District Committee of Administrative District Marburg-Biedenkopf, Marburg, Germany
Abstract: We investigated research performance of Georgian scientists in 2007-2013,
using the official databases of governmental Shota Rustaveli National
Scientific Foundation (SRNSF). Bibliometric characteristics: number of
publications and citations as well as h-index values of leaders of awarded
projects, were obtained from SCOPUS database. Research performance of
grantees was analyzed in total as well as for certain SRNSF research
directions. We found that about 60% of all leaders of awarded projects have articles
registered in the Scopus database by the end of 2013. In different research
directions percentage of leaders with articles in Scopus database varied in
wide range from 27% to 81%. We showed that there is no correlation
between values of reviewer's evaluation scores and bibliometric data of
grantees, in the Scopus data base. We conclude that quality of peer-reviewing of projects of Georgian
scientists, presented to the SRNSF grant competition, do not enables
selection of the most productive project teams. Results of this, analysis,
once again points to the necessity of implementation of modern systems of
informed peer reviewing. Implementation of such approaches, combining peer-reviewing and bibliometric
analysis, is of immense importance for Georgia in the light of Country's
current low research performance.
Keywords: Quality of research performance, bibliometrics, statistics
