Invitation to Pilot Test the GLOBAL Reporting Guideline Checklist and Elaboration & Explanation Document

[Stefanie Haustein]

Dear colleagues, 

I hope you are doing well. I am writing to make you aware of the Guidance List for the repOrting of Bibliometric AnaLyses (GLOBAL), a reporting guideline which is currently in a draft stage. The draft GLOBAL checklist was developed through a scoping review, recently published in QSS, and a Delphi process to improve the transparency and completeness of bibliometric analyses. (If you have already participated in the Delphi, thank you for your contribution and please excuse this additional email.)

An Elaboration & Explanation (E&E) document complements the GLOBAL by providing detailed explanations and examples for each checklist item, drawing on peer-reviewed literature and international expert feedback. We are now in the final stages of development and are seeking your feedback on the clarity and real-world applicability of the draft guideline.

We invite you to participate in our pilot study by applying the GLOBAL draft guideline and E&E document to either your own bibliometric work (published or in preparation) or a bibliometric paper you are reviewing, and then complete a survey to share your feedback.

We welcome participants from all disciplines and career stages, as long as they have experience with bibliometric studies. You are eligible to participate in the pilot testing if before the end of September 2025 you are:

• preparing a research article that reports a bibliometric analysis, OR
• acting as a peer reviewer for such an article.

If you are interested in participating, please download the following documents:

• the draft GLOBAL checklist, which contains all items that the two-round Delphi process idnetified as relevant items to be included in the reporting guideline; and
• the Elaboration and Explanation (E&E) document, which explains each item from the GLOBAL checklist in detail and provides at least one example per item.

For the pilot testing, please consider whether the manuscript which you are assessing clearly reports on each item in the GLOBAL checklist as outlined in the documents above. Once you have completed your assessment, please share your feedback via the following form:

• the pilot-test survey, where we ask for feedback on each of the checklist items.

We kindly ask that you complete and submit the pilot testing survey by the 30 September 2025. Your contributions will be acknowledged in the final publication.

For more information, please visit the project website at https://www.scholcommlab.ca/research/global.

If you have any questions or encounter any issues while reviewing the materials or completing the survey, please let me, Jeremy Ng or Ludo Waltman know, and we will be happy to assist you.

Thank you very much for supporting this important initiative to improve the reporting of bibliometric analyses. 

Kind regards,

Stefanie (on behalf of the GLOBAL Steering Committee)

Jeremy Y. Ng

Ludo Waltman

David Moher

Dimity Stephen

Michel Sabé

Marco Solmi

Stefanie Haustein

Stefanie Haustein

watch our educational videos on why to “Stop using the h-index”: youtu.be/HSf79S3XkJw

 

Associate Professor | Professeure agrégée

School of Information Studies | École des sciences de l'information

University of Ottawa | Université d'Ottawa

 

Co-director | Codirectrice

Scholarly Communications Lab

 

e-mail: stefanie...@uottawa.ca

web:  scholcommlab.ca