Job Competency Criteria for scientometrics specialists: Interviews with Faculty Members and Job Owners

One of the requirements for organizations' human resources is the compilation of job competencies and professional skills for different ranks of employees. Job competencies are a set of provable characteristics and skills that enable and improve the efficiency or performance of a job. They are the examination of people's skills and abilities to make them hold different jobs and positions, and through its analysis, possible training needs of employees are also identified. Compilation of job competencies of various specialties is significant for organizations in the sense that the quality of employees' work is one of the factors for the continuity of the organization's success; Therefore, it is necessary to use a systematic way to select employees and identify and select the most suitable people for the desired position from domestic or foreign applicants. This study aims to identify the job competencies and skills required by scientometrics specialists to provide an effective performance in training, hiring, and evaluating specialists in this field, as well as reviewing the educational program and course title of scientometrics.

This research was conducted using qualitative and quantitative content analysis to identify categories and count the frequency of analysis units. Qualitative content analysis is a research method for the content interpretation of textual data through systematic classification, coding, and thematization or design of known patterns. The quantitative content analysis method was also used to count the analysis units (sentences). The research population consisted of 18 scientometrics specialists, including faculty members of knowledge and information science, managers, and experts of scientometrics units of the Ministry of Health, who were selected by purposeful sampling. The data collection tool was a semi-structured interview. The data were analyzed manually based on semantic units (sentences). In general, in the content analysis, the unit of analysis in this research was related sentences and concepts, which were analyzed and counted after careful examination. Then, in each sentence, the codes were determined manually and the main and subcategories were selected for each topic. The reliability of codes was checked by two researchers. The similarity percentage of the selected codes was 87%. The validity of the interview guide was also confirmed by two experts. The validity of the research was also controlled by selecting the sample with the maximum information richness and also the precise determination of the data analysis unit.

By analyzing the interviews, 184 unique codes were extracted, and 41 skills and nine job competencies were compiled by categorizing them. The professional competencies of scientific experts were classified into two categories: general competencies and specialized competencies. General competence includes four items of communication characteristics, independent learning, training and counseling, and knowledge management. Specialized competence was formulated, including 5 items of ability to use scientometric tools, scientometric data management, specialized knowledge, data mining techniques, statistical analysis tools, research policy-making, and strategy formulation.

With the expansion of the scientometrics field and its activities in Iranian organizations, the necessity of compiling the job competencies and professional skills of experts in this field was felt as an independent specialty. In addition to identifying the competencies and skills needed by scientometrics specialists, this article helps to know more about this field and shows the importance and necessity of this field in academic and scientific institutions. Scientometrics, as a job in the set of organizational jobs, has competencies and skills that can be the basis of integrated human resource science in training, hiring, and evaluating professionals in this job. The value of this research findings is in line with the actual activities of the job and global scientometrics trends. The identified competencies and skills showed that the curriculum and course titles of scientometrics do not cover all of these cases and need to be reviewed for this purpose. Furthermore, some general competencies and skills cannot be included in the curriculum and require in-service training provided by science centers.