The Bermuda triangle of Lean, Bibliometrics, and Research Assessment

Most researchers know the frustrating feeling of having to walk down many blind alleys during their research processes before finding the highway, that leads to a result and solution. But what if research processes could be straightened out, so that no detours were necessary? Is it possible to make research processes more efficient and straight forward and thus more efficient? For this reason, a new Lean model was developed, the Model of Improvement to optimize research procedures in clinical research at Odense University Hospital and University of Southern Denmark. Lean models have a mixed reputation for several reasons. One is that it is often associated with the new public management paradigm since its aim is to increase effectivity and reduce waste. But can such models actually increase researcher efficiency and if so, how do we measure its effects? Bibliometric is a well-known and regular used statistical analysis for measuring research performance, research impact, and quality of the research. However, you will need to be careful as there are some limitations as to how to interpret the results. So how will it turn out when mixing Lean, bibliometric and research performance? This is the topic for our presentation. We will firstly outline a Lean model, the Model of Improvement, then show examples of different bibliometric analysis to assess the implementation of this model, and finally, we will take a critical standpoint and discuss how to interpret the results. The conclusion, and our suggestion, will be to always accompany bibliometric metrics with qualitative assessments.