IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/jamist/v59y2008i1p136-149.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Usage impact factor: The effects of sample characteristics on usage‐based impact metrics

Author

Listed:
  • Johan Bollen
  • Herbert Van de Sompel

Abstract

There exist ample demonstrations that indicators of scholarly impact analogous to the citation‐based ISI Impact Factor can be derived from usage data; however, so far, usage can practically be recorded only at the level of distinct information services. This leads to community‐specific assessments of scholarly impact that are difficult to generalize to the global scholarly community. In contrast, the ISI Impact Factor is based on citation data and thereby represents the global community of scholarly authors. The objective of this study is to examine the effects of community characteristics on assessments of scholarly impact from usage. We define a journal Usage Impact Factor that mimics the definition of the Thomson Scientific ISI Impact Factor. Usage Impact Factor rankings are calculated on the basis of a large‐scale usage dataset recorded by the linking servers of the California State University system from 2003 to 2005. The resulting journal rankings are then compared to the Thomson Scientific ISI Impact Factor that is used as a reference indicator of general impact. Our results indicate that the particular scientific and demographic characteristics of a discipline have a strong effect on resulting usage‐based assessments of scholarly impact. In particular, we observed that as the number of graduate students and faculty increases in a particular discipline, Usage Impact Factor rankings will converge more strongly with the ISI Impact Factor.

Suggested Citation

  • Johan Bollen & Herbert Van de Sompel, 2008. "Usage impact factor: The effects of sample characteristics on usage‐based impact metrics," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 59(1), pages 136-149, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:jamist:v:59:y:2008:i:1:p:136-149
    DOI: 10.1002/asi.20746
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.20746
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1002/asi.20746?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:jamist:v:59:y:2008:i:1:p:136-149. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.asis.org .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.