Teaching as part of open scholarship: developing a scientometric framework for Open Educational Resources | Scientometrics

Abstract:  Scientometric assessments of Open Educational Resources (OER) offer a way to quantitatively represent teaching in higher education through openly available and accessible artefacts. They could serve science policy monitoring and lead to greater visibility of higher education teaching in a recognition and reward system. In this context, we discuss possible statistics for OER. In a pre-study, a first version of OER indicators was discussed in three focus groups. The findings of these discussions were incorporated into the creation of a more comprehensive second version of a framework for OER statistics, which was evaluated in detail in six expert interviews. After incorporating changes as a result of the evaluation, a third version of the framework for OER statistics emerged that enables scientometric measurements of OER, while considering the common criticisms of scientometric measurements. The framework comprises an individual level, which recognizes all OER created by an individual, and an institutional level, which serves to quantify OER created by an institution. At the individual level, productivity, cooperation, resonance, openness, altmetric and transfer indicators are available. In addition, we record dichotomously whether an OER certification exists. At the institutional level, additional support indicators are proposed to recognize achievements in the development and maintenance of OER-promoting structures at institutional level.