• Corpus ID: 146360516

The objectives, design and selection process of the Flemish Academic Bibliographic Database for the Social Sciences and Humanities (VABB-SHW)

@inproceedings{Verleysen2014TheOD,
  title={The objectives, design and selection process of the Flemish Academic Bibliographic Database for the Social Sciences and Humanities (VABB-SHW)},
  author={Frederik T. Verleysen and Pol Ghesqui{\`e}re and Tim C. E. Engels},
  year={2014}
}

• Frederik T. Verleysen, P. Ghesquière, Tim C. E. Engels
• Published 2014
• Economics

The present chapter introduces the goals, design and procedure of the VABB-SHW (Vlaams Academisch Bibliografisch Bestand voor de Sociale en Humane Wetenschappen/Flemish Academic Bibliographic Database for the Social Sciences and Humanities). After briefly sketching the background and history of the systems for university funding in Flanders (Belgium) and other European countries, we discuss the design and procedure of the VABB-SHW itself. By highlighting some major publication patterns in the SSH (social sciences and humanities) as reflected by the data contained in the VABB-SHW, we thereafter illustrate how the Flemish database is adapted to, and further evolving towards, reliably capturing the diverse publication output of the SSH as practised at Flemish universities. Finally, focusing on book publications, we make a comparison with the selection process in the Scandinavian countries. Over the last two decades, several European countries have developed systems for measuring research performance in the natural, technical and biomedical sciences, as well as in the social sciences and humanities. In order to improve the quality of research, PRFSs (performance-based research funding systems), with incentive structures linking output ‘quality’ to funding, have been developed [1]. In the U.K., the RAE (Research Assessment Exercise) (now Research Excellence Framework) has used peer review by disciplinary panels to evaluate the quality of the self-selected top outputs of research units. In Norway, Denmark, Finland and Flanders, a different route was chosen. In these four countries, full coverage bibliographic databases have been developed in order to monitor the academic and scientific production of university scholars. The best-known example of such