Has the Excellence Initiative increased the research quality of the funded universities? And to what extent do researchers who move to industry after completing their doctorate still draw on the content of their dissertation in their new job? Bibliometric data can help higher education and science research to answer these and many other questions. Bibliometric data is used to measure scientific publication activity. The focus here is on the so-called metadata of scientific articles and books, i.e., information on where at which university and in which context the respective publication originated, who wrote it, and where and when it was published.

A central problem for research with bibliometric data is that they are owned by large scientific publishers or other companies and cannot be readily used for research. In order to address this problem and thus open up new perspectives for university and science research in Germany, the Federal Ministry of Research and Education (BMBF) has now launched the Bibliometrics Competence Network. This competence network brings together the leading institutions of science and university research in Germany. In the future, they will be able to access the central bibliometric databases via a joint license. The International Center for Higher Education Research (INCHER) at the University of Kassel is also a member of the Bibliometrics Competence Network.

"We are very happy to be able to do internationally competitive cutting-edge research with bibliometric data on this basis," says Professor Guido Bünstorf,, who represents INCHER in the competence network. His colleague Dr. Johannes König, who is also involved in the competence network on behalf of INCHER, adds: "We can apply complex artificial intelligence methods to the data now available and venture into completely new research questions. Membership in the competence network is therefore a step into the future of INCHER."