The development of a bibliometric service point at the library of the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano (UNIBZ) has to be seen in the light of the higher education reform in Italy in 2010. As part of the reform several measures regarding quality promotion and quality management have been concluded, which, as a consequence, lead to evaluation activities on different levels. At first bibliometric services at the UNIBZ were introduced primarily to support the UNIBZ management in bibliometric matters. Very soon, however, the demand for bibliometric services also emerged from the researchers’ side. This fact has lead to a continuous growth of services, to meet the requirements of both target groups, management representatives and researchers.
In this paper the phases of a life cycle of a traditional research product (e.g. journal article or contribution in a book) are described in the light of the Italian evaluation context from a research support perspective. In the production phase of an article, bibliometric support relates to the selection of a journal or a publisher, regarding formal criteria but also content. The primary target group in this phase are emerging researchers in the first stages of their career. After the publication of the article in the second phase, there is a high demand for data management, as the publication gets indexed in different databases used for evaluations. In the assessment phase of the publication, the most time consuming phase from a research support perspective, the focus is on counselling and support of the evaluation process with the aim of obtaining the most favourable results, for both the individual researcher and the organization.
The challenges implied are the time consuming field of data management on the one hand, as this is indispensable for getting complete and correct data, and the limited comparability of research results in Social Science and Humanities among countries on the other. This problem is specific for the multilingual and multicultural area of South Tyrol, as researchers from abroad often come from different research cultures and the application of national evaluation rules may turn out to be problematic. In this context alternative solutions are needed.
