title: Politics of personnel and landscapes of knowledge.
abstract: This is a commentary on three articles on bibliometrics in social work that appear in this issue of the journal. I argue that bibliometrics can make many contributions to the study of the structure and evolution of social work's knowledge base, but it cannot completely remove subjectivity in the evaluation of the scholarship of individual faculty, where legitimate differences of professional opinion will remain.
authors.affiliation: Department of Social Welfare, School of Public Affairs, 3250 Public Policy Building, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1656, USA. kirk@ucla.edu
authors.forename: Stuart A
authors.initials: SA
authors.lastname: Kirk
mesh_terms: D015706:Bibliometrics; D002322:Career Mobility; D003659:Decision Making, Organizational; D004522:Educational Status; D004650:Employee Performance Appraisal / Q000379:methods*; D005178:Faculty / Q000592:standards*; D006801:Humans; D019359:Knowledge; D010560:Personnel Selection; D011057:Politics; D011361:Professional Competence; D012947:Social Work / Q000592:standards / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*