The counting house, measuring those who count:
Presence of Bibliometrics, Scientometrics, Informetrics, Webometrics
and Altmetrics in Google Scholar Citations, ResearcherID, ResearchGate,
Mendeley, & Twitter
Abstract:
Following in the footsteps of the model of scientific communication,
which has recently gone through a metamorphosis (from the Gutenberg
galaxy to the Web galaxy), a change in the model and methods of
scientific evaluation is also taking place. A set of new scientific
tools are now providing a variety of indicators which measure all
actions and interactions among scientists in the digital space, making
new aspects of scientific communication emerge. In this work we present a
method for “capturing” the structure of an entire scientific community
(the Bibliometrics, Scientometrics, Informetrics, Webometrics, and
Altmetrics community) and the main agents that are part of it
(scientists, documents, and sources) through the lens of Google Scholar
Citations (GSC).
Additionally, we compare these author
“portraits” to the ones offered by other profile or social platforms
currently used by academics (ResearcherID, ResearchGate, Mendeley, and
Twitter), in order to test their degree of use, completeness,
reliability, and the validity of the information they provide. A sample
of 814 authors (researchers in Bibliometrics with a public profile
created in GSC) was subsequently searched in the other platforms,
collecting the main indicators computed by each of them. The data
collection was carried out on September, 2015. Spearman correlation (α=
0.05) was applied to these indicators (a total of 31), and a Principal
Component Analysis was applied in order to reveal the relationships
among metrics and platforms as well as the possible existence of metric
clusters.
We found that it is feasible to depict an accurate
representation of the current state of the Bibliometrics community using
data from GSC (the most influential authors, documents, journals, and
publishers). Regarding the number of authors found in each platform, GSC
takes the first place (814 authors), followed at a distance by
ResearchGate (543), which is currently growing at a vertiginous speed.
The number of Mendeley profiles is high, although 17.1% of them are
basically empty. ResearcherID is also affected by this issue (34.45% of
the profiles are empty), as is Twitter (47% of the Twitter accounts have
published less than 100 tweets). Only 11% of our sample (93 authors)
have created a profile in all the platforms analyzed in this study. From
the PCA, we found two kinds of impact on the Web: first, all metrics
related to academic impact. This first group can further be divided into
usage metrics (views and downloads) and citation metrics. Second, all
metrics related to connectivity and popularity (followers). ResearchGate
indicators, as well as Mendeley readers, present a high correlation to
all the indicators from GSC, but only a moderate correlation to the
indicators in ResearcherID. Twitter indicators achieve only low
correlations to the rest of the indicators, the highest of these been to
GSC (0.42-0.46), and to Mendeley (0.41-0.46).
Lastly, we present
a taxonomy of all the errors that may affect the reliability of the
data contained in each of these platforms, with a special emphasis in
GSC, since it has been our main source of data. These errors alert us to
the danger of blindly using any of these platforms for the assessment
of individuals, without verifying the veracity and exhaustiveness of the
data.
In addition to this working paper, we also have made
available a website where all the data obtained for each author and the
results of the analysis of the most cited documents can be found:
Scholar Mirrors.
Source: MartÃn-MartÃn, A., Orduna-Malea, E.,
Ayllón, J. M., & López-Cózar, E. D. (2016). The counting house,
measuring those who count: Presence of Bibliometrics, Scientometrics,
Informetrics, Webometrics and Altmetrics in Google Scholar Citations,
ResearcherID, ResearchGate, Mendeley, & Twitter. EC3 Working Papers
Nº 21, In Progress, Version 1.0. 19th of January , 2016 Granada. doi:10.13140/RG.2.1.4814.4402
The counting house, measuring those who count: Presence of Bibliometrics, Scientometrics, Informetrics, Webometrics and Altmetrics in Google Scholar Citations, ResearcherID, ResearchGate, Mendeley,
No comments:
Post a Comment