STANDARDS ISSUES IN A NATIONAL BIBLIOMETRIC DATABASE - THE AUSTRALIANCASE

In recent years researchers in the Performance Indicators Project at t he Australian National University have undertaken a number of projects involving collaboration with colleagues in England or attempts to rep licate results obtained by others. All projects have necessitated clos e scrutiny of the methodologies previously used or to be used and have made clear the urgent need for comparable standards. In this paper we have focused on two projects: one, an analysis of Australia's shares of publications and citations, where we sought to learn from the debat e on methodology that surrounded the question of decline in British sc ience; the second, an analysis of astronomy publications in Australia where we sought to replicate methodology used in a previous European s tudy.