In my work at the Academic Analytics Research Center (AARC), I spend a great deal of time thinking about how we measure and understand scholarship. The tools of scientometrics and bibliometrics are powerful, but they must be wielded with purpose and precision. When we use flawed categories to measure scholarly output, the resulting analyses, no matter how sophisticated, are also flawed.
This is the core argument of a new opinion I co-authored with my colleagues Bill Savage and Dick Wheeler, just published in Frontiers in Research Metrics and Analytics. It’s titled “Distinct domains: a call for nuance in the categorization and evaluation of ‘Arts and Humanities’ disciplines". Our central finding is simple but (we believe) important: the common practice of lumping together the visual and performing arts and the lettered humanities in a single category (“Arts and Humanities”) creates significant distortions that disadvantage both scholars and the institutions they serve.
Here is a link to the new publication: 10.3389/frma.2025.1661966
For many years, this aggregation has been the norm. It's a common practice in university administration, in widely used data sources like the US National Science Foundation’s Survey of Earned Doctorates, and in influential ranking schemes like those from US News and World Report and Times Higher Ed. As scholars and practitioners, we know that administrative convenience shouldn't come at the expense of accuracy. Our research provides empirical evidence to support that intuition.
Analyzing a ten-year tranche of publication data we made public previously (10.3389/frma.2022.812312), we observed a stark divergence in publication patterns. In a typical humanities discipline, about 65% of scholars have published at least one article within a three-year period, a number that rises to 85% after ten years. In contrast, the visual and performing arts exhibit a much different rhythm: only 21% of faculty publish an article within three years, and that rate reaches just 32% after a full decade.
This isn't an indictment of productivity. It’s a reflection of disciplinary differences. Much of the scholarly labor in the visual and performing arts is practice-based - it involves composing music, choreographing dances, or creating and curating art for exhibition. These outputs, which are the primary modes of knowledge generation in those fields, are not captured by traditional bibliometric archives.
The consequences of this miscategorization are serious. It makes humanities divisions appear less productive than they are, and it imposes an inappropriate standard on arts faculty. When institutions rely on these distorted metrics for decisions about hiring, promotion, and resource allocation, the impact is real and often inequitable.
As a community, we must demand more from our data providers. We must insist that influential databases and global ranking systems disaggregate the "Arts and Humanities" category. Our work provides a clear, data-driven rationale for this change. The nuance we are calling for isn’t just about better data - it’s about intellectual honesty and fair assessment of scholarly contributions across all disciplines.
- Anthony J. Olejniczak, Ph.D.
