How to compare apples with oranges: using interdisciplinary "exchange rates" to evaluate publications across disciplines

Academic research performance is typically assessed on the basis of scientific productivity. While the number of publications may provide an accurate and useful metric of research performance within one discipline, interdisciplinary comparisons of publication counts prove much more problematic. To solve this problem, Timo Korkeamäki, Jukka Sihvonen, and Sami Vähämaa introduce interdisciplinary "exchange rates", which can be used to convert the publication records of individuals or institutions to a common scale. Adopting such an approach can increase the objectivity of cross-disciplinary comparisons by eliminating disparities in publishing potential across disciplines.