The motivations for and effects of modified fractional counting

Abstract

A recent contribution to Journal of Informetrics (Donner, 2024) raised important questions about the properties and effects of bibliometric counting methods, mainly focusing on our contribution to the same journal five years ago (Sivertsen, Rousseau, and Zhang, 2019) where we developed and proposed a new counting method called modified fractional counting (MFC) for the measurement of scientific production at aggregate levels such as institutions or countries. Paul Donner identified four possible problems with the MFC indicator that have not been discussed before. Two of them raise fundamental questions about the object of study in scientometrics and research policy studies while the other two are related to the core discussions about responsible research assessment and funding. We respond to all four problems, both conceptually and with new empirical information.