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Paper short abstract

Combining autoethnography and practitioner insights, this paper offers a confessional reflection from within bibliometric practice, examining how simplifications and omissions shape decision-making and reproduce inequalities in science.

Paper long abstract

Bibliometric indicators have become central to research evaluation, shaping funding decisions, academic careers, and institutional priorities. While they promise seemingly neutral methods, their limitations are well documented, including biases and the reinforcement of disciplinary, linguistic, gender, and regional inequalities (Gingras, 2016; Beigel et al, 2019; Abramo et al, 2026; Sooryamoorthy, 2020). They may also incentivise gaming practices and breaches of research integrity (Biagioli & Lippman, 2020).

This paper offers a set of “confessional tales” (Van Maanen, 2011) reflecting on the tensions of working within bibliometrics while critically engaging with its effects. Drawing on my experience as both a bibliometrician and an academic, and on roles across universities, journals, and the Colombian Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation, I explore how indicators are produced and enacted in practice. Positioned across these sites, I examine moments where technical rigor coexists with simplification, and where known limitations are negotiated or silenced in decision-making contexts.

These reflections are complemented by a set of exploratory conversations with fellow bibliometricians. Together, these accounts ask: What is lost when indicators become authoritative tools beyond their limits? What is edited out when bibliometrics is translated for policy? And how do practitioners navigate, justify, or resist these tensions?

By mobilizing these confessions, the paper contributes to ongoing debates on responsible metrics (DORA, 2012; Hicks et al, 2015; European University Association et al, 2022), while inviting a more reflexive engagement with the role of bibliometrics in shaping not only research systems, but also human lives and science as a whole.