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How quickly do publications get read? The evolution of mendeley reader counts for new articles

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  • Nabeil Maflahi
  • Mike Thelwall

Abstract

Within science, citation counts are widely used to estimate research impact but publication delays mean that they are not useful for recent research. This gap can be filled by Mendeley reader counts, which are valuable early impact indicators for academic articles because they appear before citations and correlate strongly with them. Nevertheless, it is not known how Mendeley readership counts accumulate within the year of publication, and so it is unclear how soon they can be used. In response, this paper reports a longitudinal weekly study of the Mendeley readers of articles in 6 library and information science journals from 2016. The results suggest that Mendeley readers accrue from when articles are first available online and continue to steadily build. For journals with large publication delays, articles can already have substantial numbers of readers by their publication date. Thus, Mendeley reader counts may even be useful as early impact indicators for articles before they have been officially published in a journal issue. If field normalized indicators are needed, then these can be generated when journal issues are published using the online first date.

Suggested Citation

  • Nabeil Maflahi & Mike Thelwall, 2018. "How quickly do publications get read? The evolution of mendeley reader counts for new articles," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 69(1), pages 158-167, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:jinfst:v:69:y:2018:i:1:p:158-167
    DOI: 10.1002/asi.23909
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    Cited by:

    1. Lutz Bornmann & Rüdiger Mutz & Robin Haunschild & Felix Moya-Anegon & Mirko Almeida Madeira Clemente & Moritz Stefaner, 2021. "Mapping the impact of papers on various status groups in excellencemapping.net: a new release of the excellence mapping tool based on citation and reader scores," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(11), pages 9305-9331, November.
    2. P Sage Anderson & Aubrey R Odom & Hunter M Gray & Jordan B Jones & William F Christensen & Todd Hollingshead & Joseph G Hadfield & Alyssa Evans-Pickett & Megan Frost & Christopher Wilson & Lance E Dav, 2020. "A case study exploring associations between popular media attention of scientific research and scientific citations," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(7), pages 1-15, July.
    3. Wang, Zhiqi & Chen, Yue & Glänzel, Wolfgang, 2020. "Preprints as accelerator of scholarly communication: An empirical analysis in Mathematics," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 14(4).
    4. Weishu Liu, 2021. "A matter of time: publication dates in Web of Science Core Collection," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(1), pages 849-857, January.
    5. Michael Taylor, 2023. "Slow, slow, quick, quick, slow: five altmetric sources observed over a decade show evolving trends, by research age, attention source maturity and open access status," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 128(4), pages 2175-2200, April.
    6. Kaltrina Nuredini, 2021. "Investigating Altmetric Information For The Top 1000 Journals From Handelsblatt Ranking In Economic And Business Studies," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 35(5), pages 1315-1343, December.
    7. Xiaozan Lyu & Rodrigo Costas, 2020. "How do academic topics shift across altmetric sources? A case study of the research area of Big Data," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 123(2), pages 909-943, May.
    8. Zhichao Fang & Rodrigo Costas, 2020. "Studying the accumulation velocity of altmetric data tracked by Altmetric.com," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 123(2), pages 1077-1101, May.
    9. Zhiqi Wang & Wolfgang Glänzel & Yue Chen, 2020. "The impact of preprints in Library and Information Science: an analysis of citations, usage and social attention indicators," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 125(2), pages 1403-1423, November.
    10. Michael Thelwall, 2018. "Can Microsoft Academic be used for citation analysis of preprint archives? The case of the Social Science Research Network," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 115(2), pages 913-928, May.
    11. Rongying Zhao & Xu Wang, 2019. "Evaluation and comparison of influence in international Open Access journals between China and USA," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 120(3), pages 1091-1110, September.
    12. Mike Thelwall, 2018. "Early Mendeley readers correlate with later citation counts," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 115(3), pages 1231-1240, June.
    13. Tan Jin & Huiqiong Duan & Xiaofei Lu & Jing Ni & Kai Guo, 2021. "Do research articles with more readable abstracts receive higher online attention? Evidence from Science," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(10), pages 8471-8490, October.
    14. Mike Thelwall, 2018. "Differences between journals and years in the proportions of students, researchers and faculty registering Mendeley articles," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 115(2), pages 717-729, May.
    15. Kousha, Kayvan & Thelwall, Mike & Abdoli, Mahshid, 2018. "Can Microsoft Academic assess the early citation impact of in-press articles? A multi-discipline exploratory analysis," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 12(1), pages 287-298.
    16. Sergio Copiello, 2020. "Other than detecting impact in advance, alternative metrics could act as early warning signs of retractions: tentative findings of a study into the papers retracted by PLoS ONE," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 125(3), pages 2449-2469, December.

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