Publications

The increasing emphasis on responsible research assessment has renewed the need for conceptual tools that help communicate the complementary roles of quantitative and qualitative evaluation. This essay proposes an interpretative metaphor that frames bibliometric indicators as the “blood tests” of research systems—heuristic devices that reveal multidimensional aspects of system vitality, balance, and dysfunction. The metaphor, grounded in standard categories of clinical diagnostics (hematological, hepatic, renal, lipidic, and cardiovascular panels), provides an accessible language for scholars and policymakers in research. Each bibliometric technique—ranging from publication and citation counts to patent analysis, altmetrics, and topic modelling—is associated with a diagnostic function such as screening, monitoring, or early risk detection. By linking established principles of responsible metrics (DORA, Leiden Manifesto, Metric Tide, CoARA) with the professionalization of evaluators, the essay situates the metaphor within current debates on bibliometric literacy and the ethical interpretation of indicators. Rather than prescribing metrics or decision rules, the contribution invites reflection on how evaluators can interpret bibliometric signals diagnostically—as contextual evidence for institutional learning, strategic decision-making, and the cultivation of healthy, adaptive research systems. Consistent with the essay format, this contribution does not propose a new evaluative methodology nor empirical validation. Instead, it advances a heuristic and communicative framework intended to emphasize the holistic, contextual, and professionally informed interpretation of quantitative indicators in the evaluation of research activity.

The integration of digital technologies into historical research is a global trend; however, its manifestation varies across national academic traditions. This study investigates the explicit articulation and terminological adoption of digital methods in Russian historical science by analyzing the prevalence and dynamics of specific technological terms in a large corpus of publications. We first constructed a controlled thesaurus of 166 digital technologies by manually curating keyphrases from Russia’s primary specialized journal in the field (“Istoricheskaya Informatika”, Historical Informatics). This vocabulary was then used to perform text-mining on two distinct corpora: a broad sample of 95K Russian-language history articles from various journals (2004–2024) and a focused sample of publications on the Great Patriotic War History from the Russian Science Citation Index (RSCI, 2014–2023). Our quantitative analysis reveals the frequency, trends, and thematic context of digital method mentions. The findings highlight a significant disparity between the specialized discourse of “Istoricheskaya Informatika” and the mainstream historical publications, while also identifying specific areas (such as archaeological studies) where certain technologies have gained traction. This research offers a novel, data-driven perspective on the “digital turn” in Russian historiography and contributes to the comparative study of digital humanities’ global development.

In 2003, as a young lecturer, I saw research as a craft to be learned, not a tally to be scored [...]