Congratulations, Dr. Philip Purnell!
PHD DEFENCE
On 28 January 2025, Philip Purnell successfully defended his PhD thesis at Leiden University, titled "Bibliometrics in the Context of Research Evaluation and Research Policy".
Philip was supervised by Ton van Raan and Ludo Waltman. For his dissertation, he investigated the uses and limitations of bibliometrics in research evaluation and policy making: “My research contributes to the ongoing debate in the field about the balance of quantitative bibliometrics and qualitative expert judgement in both research evaluation and research policy. Through five case studies, I demonstrate the benefits of bibliometrics, i.e. speed, scale, cost, and objectivity, but also the limitations, i.e., data quality, obscure curation methods, and the impact on human behaviour. The concluding part proposes how far we can go with bibliometrics, where we need to pass to expert judgement, and offers recommendations to policymakers, evaluators, and the bibliometric community at large.”
In his laudation after the PhD defence, Ton van Raan praised Philip’s work: "Congratulations, Philip on this impressive contribution to the progress of bibliometric research!" Ludo Waltman, Philip’s other supervisor, adds to this: “I see Philip’s dissertation as a great example of the rich tradition we have at CWTS in the field of bibliometrics, with a strong focus on making bibliometric analyses as robust and as policy-relevant as possible. Working together with Ton, the grandfather of this tradition, in the supervision of Philip’s extensive and very rigorous PhD research was a wonderful experience.”
Being based in the United Arab Emirates, Philip has been working on his PhD part-time. In the past, he managed a researcher training business, an open access publishing house, and a consultancy. More recently, he has worked at the UAE University in Al Ain and at the Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence in Abu Dhabi as Head of Institutional Research and benchmarking and is currently heading academic recruitment.
At CWTS, we are very proud of Philip’s achievement and look forward to following his work and achievements to come and wish him all the best for his future career!