Bibliometric analysis is an essential tool for providing a global comparison tool (on the scale of a country or public organization, for example), monitoring the evolution of a discipline, identifying collaborative networks or estimating the impact of the work of a country, organization or individual.
The aim of this fact sheet is not to use bibliometrics, which is controversial, to judge the activity of researchers, but to use it to optimize the results of research or bibliographic monitoring.
Officially, bibliometrics was created to measure the publication activity of researchers. Through the statistical analysis of publications, bibliometric analysis makes it possible to measure the scientific output of a country, an institute or a researcher.
But bibliometrics can also be used to refine a search, to find leads from other authors, keywords or themes on specific subjects. It can also be used to weight the results of a bibliographic search (or watch).