Bibliometric synthesis of educational productivity research: Benchmarking the visibility of German educational research

This paper investigates the fitness-for-purpose and soundness of bibliometric parameters for measuring and elucidating the performance of researchers in the field of education sciences in Germany and other European countries for the purpose of benchmarking. In order to take into account the specificities of the publication pattern of researchers in education sciences, bibliometric data are used as benchmarks. Specifically, the analysis is based on the data of Scopus and SCImago and exploits the contributions of educational researchers from Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, and Scandinavian countries to leading international journals within the period 2010 to 2015–2016. The results demonstrate that the visibility of German education in international journals is not as bad as is often assumed. Nevertheless, substantial shortcomings are revealed. After discussing some factors responsible for these shortcomings, the article concludes with considerations on possible consequences to be drawn from the status quo of international visibility of German educational science