Bibliometrics – an overview of the main metrics and products

The MyRI Project team

Main Metrics and Products

(1) ISI Web of Science(2) Scopus(3) Google Scholar/Publish or Perish

(1) Web of Science - Coverage

A multi-disciplinary citation database providing access to over 10,000 of the most prestigious high impact research journals in the world. It consists of three separate databases:

Science Citation Index Expanded (1945-date) approx. 7,000 journals

Social Sciences Citation Index (1956-date) approx. 2,000 journals

Arts & Humanities Citation Index (1975-date) approx. 1,000 journals

ISI Web of Knowledge / Web of Science

• ~ 10,000 journals

• Only a few conference proceedings, books & open access journals

• Emphasis on natural sciences and life sciences

• English language US/UK bias

• Weak at distinguishing between authors

• Earliest citations - 1955

Additional Resources - Analytical Tools & Web Search ToolsSearch Journal Citation Reports

• Journal performance metrics offer a systematic, objective means to critically evaluate the world's leading journals

– Delivers quantifiable statistical information based on citation data– Helps determine a publication’s impact and influence in the global research community– Includes journal and category data

Essential Science Indicators

• In-depth analytical tool offering data for ranking scientists, institutions, countries, and journals.

– Explore science performance statistics and science trends data, based on journal article publication counts and citation data

– Determine research output and impact in specific fields of research– Evaluate potential employees, collaborators, reviewers, and peers

Web Search Tools

• Find scientifically relevant Web content fast! Search the open Web and quickly see the most relevant content for the topics you care about, with Scientific WebPlus

Web of Science Training Opportunities• Select Training in multiple languages for Web of Science Training Opportunities:

• Live Sessions scheduled that you can join online.

• Recorded Training in many languages covering topics such as Refine and Analyze Search Results, Search Tips for Web of Science, Cited Reference Searching, Citation Report and H-index, All Databases Search, Exporting and Using Citation Report Data, Saving Search Histories and Creating Alerts, Managing Search Results.

• Training Materials: Web of Science Tutorial, Workbook, Glossary and Quick Reference Cards.

(2) Scopus Coverage

• ~17,000 titles• Greater geographical spread than ISI – 60% is outside U.S.

• Better inclusion of non-journal material, e.g. conference papers, open access journals, book series

• Contains useful tools for author disambiguation• Limited coverage, 1995 onwards

Scopus• This is the worlds largest abstract and citation database

containing both peer-reviewed research literature and quality web sources. With over 18,000 titles from more than 5,000 publishers, Scopus offers researchers a quick, easy and comprehensive resource to support their research needs in the scientific, technical, medical and social sciences fields and, more recently, also in the arts and humanities.

Scopus Tutorials

(3) Google Scholar

• Very comprehensive – good coverage for humanities• Poor quality control

Cited by data contains countless errorse.g. papers from 2009 being cited by papers from 2005

Google Scholar cont.

• Widest range of material included though no list of sources available• No indication of timescale covered• No indication of update frequency• Relatively unstructured – may contain duplicate entries (e.g. pre-prints, post-

prints)• Includes sources such as undergraduate theses, research proposals & reports• No way to distinguish between authors with same initials• Difficult to search for a journal with various title abbreviations

Google Scholar cont.

Google Scholar cont.

• What is Google Scholar? Google Scholar provides a simple way to broadly search for scholarly literature. From one place, you can search across many disciplines and sources: articles, theses, books, abstracts and court opinions, from academic publishers, professional societies, online repositories, universities and other web sites. Google Scholar helps you find relevant work across the world of scholarly research.

• Features of Google Scholar – Search diverse sources from one convenient place – Find articles, theses, books, abstracts or court opinions – Locate the complete document through your library or on the web – Learn about key scholarly literature in any area of research

• How are documents ranked?Google Scholar aims to rank documents the way researchers do, weighing the full text of each document, where it was published, who it was written by, as well as how often and how recently it has been cited in other scholarly literature.

Publish or Perish

• Free software based on Google Scholar data. Use it to rank author and topic searches by no. of citations and view authors’ citation stats

Publish or Perish - downloading

• The Publish or Perish software is a Microsoft Windows application that can also be installed and used on Apple Mac OS X and GNU/Linux computers, with the aid of a suitable emulator such as Wine or CrossOver Mac.

• Publish or Perish is provided courtesy of Harzing.com. It is free for personal non-profit use; please refer to the End User License Agreement for the full licensing terms and conditions. http://www.harzing.com/resources.htm

Publish or Perish cont.• Publish or perish" refers to the pressure to publish work constantly to

further or sustain a career in academia. The competition for tenure-track faculty positions in academia puts increasing pressure on scholars to publish new work frequently.

• It is also a citation analysis software program, designed to help individual academics to present their case for research impact to its best advantage.

• Uses Google Scholar to calculate its various statistics

• The program was developed by Anne-Wil Harzing, a Professor in International Management at the University of Melbourne, Australia. Professor Anne-Wil’s website can be found at http://www.harzing.com.

Publish or Perish (how it works !)• It uses Google Scholar to obtain the raw citations, then analyzes these and

presents the following statistics:– Total number of papers – Total number of citations – Average number of citations per paper – Average number of citations per author – Average number of papers per author – Average number of citations per year – Hirsch's h-index and related parameters – Egghe's g-index – The contemporary h-index – The age-weighted citation rate – Two variations of individual h-indices – An analysis of the number of authors per paper.

Publish or Perish cont.

Google Scholar plus Publish or Perish (PoP)

• Publish or Perish (PoP) is a piece of software which is free to download from the web at http://www.harzing.com/pop.htm. It works with Google Scholar data to generate metrics for authors, journals and articles. The software was developed by Anne-Wil Harzing, Professor in International Management at the University of Melbourne

• As PoP uses GS data, the advantages and disadvantages of using GS should be keep in mind when analysing PoP results. PoP is limited to the same search functionality as GS

• PoP provides citation counts for each document that it returns. Click on the citation count to view the citing documents

• PoP results can be copied into Windows applications like Excel or saved as text files for further analysis

• No way to distinguish between authors who have the same initials

• Results lists should be checked for errors and false hits deselected

Additional Bibliometric Tools

• Subject Specific:– ArXiv– SPIRES– NEC– Citeseer