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Journal impact evaluation: a webometric perspective

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  • Mike Thelwall

    (University of Wolverhampton)

Abstract

In theory, the web has the potential to provide information about the wider impact of academic research, beyond traditional scholarly impact. This is because the web can reflect non-scholarly uses of research, such as in online government documents, press coverage or public discussions. Nevertheless, there are practical problems with creating metrics for journals based on web data: principally that most such metrics should be easy for journal editors or publishers to manipulate. Nevertheless, two alternatives seem to have both promise and value: citations derived from digitised books and download counts for journals within specific delivery platforms.

Suggested Citation

  • Mike Thelwall, 2012. "Journal impact evaluation: a webometric perspective," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 92(2), pages 429-441, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:scient:v:92:y:2012:i:2:d:10.1007_s11192-012-0669-x
    DOI: 10.1007/s11192-012-0669-x
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Xuemei Li & Mike Thelwall & David Wilkinson & Peter Musgrove, 2005. "National and international university departmental Web site interlinking," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 64(2), pages 151-185, August.
    2. Liwen Vaughan & Debora Shaw, 2005. "Web citation data for impact assessment: A comparison of four science disciplines," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 56(10), pages 1075-1087, August.
    3. Terrence A. Brooks, 1986. "Evidence of complex citer motivations," Journal of the American Society for Information Science, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 37(1), pages 34-36, January.
    4. Kayvan Kousha & Mike Thelwall, 2008. "Assessing the impact of disciplinary research on teaching: An automatic analysis of online syllabuses," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 59(13), pages 2060-2069, November.
    5. Lokman I. Meho & Kiduk Yang, 2007. "Impact of data sources on citation counts and rankings of LIS faculty: Web of science versus scopus and google scholar," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 58(13), pages 2105-2125, November.
    6. Franz Barjak & Mike Thelwall, 2008. "A statistical analysis of the web presences of European life sciences research teams," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 59(4), pages 628-643, February.
    7. Henk F. Moed, 2005. "Statistical relationships between downloads and citations at the level of individual documents within a single journal," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 56(10), pages 1088-1097, August.
    8. Haustein, Stefanie & Siebenlist, Tobias, 2011. "Applying social bookmarking data to evaluate journal usage," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 5(3), pages 446-457.
    9. Kousha, Kayvan & Thelwall, Mike & Rezaie, Somayeh, 2010. "Using the Web for research evaluation: The Integrated Online Impact indicator," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 4(1), pages 124-135.
    10. Mike Thelwall, 2001. "Extracting macroscopic information from Web links," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 52(13), pages 1157-1168.
    11. 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.
    12. Martin Meyer, 2003. "Academic patents as an indicator of useful research? A new approach to measure academic inventiveness," Research Evaluation, Oxford University Press, vol. 12(1), pages 17-27, April.
    13. Moed, Henk F., 2010. "Measuring contextual citation impact of scientific journals," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 4(3), pages 265-277.
    14. Liwen Vaughan & Mike Thelwall, 2003. "Scholarly use of the Web: What are the key inducers of links to journal Web sites?," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 54(1), pages 29-38, January.
    15. Xuemei Li & Mike Thelwall & David Wilkinson & Peter Musgrove, 2005. "National and international university departmental Web site interlinking," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 64(2), pages 187-208, August.
    16. Anita Coleman, 2007. "Assessing the value of a journal beyond the impact factor," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 58(8), pages 1148-1161, June.
    17. Mike Thelwall & Gareth Harries, 2004. "Do the Web sites of higher rated scholars have significantly more online impact?," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 55(2), pages 149-159, January.
    18. Liwen Vaughan & Debora Shaw, 2003. "Bibliographic and Web citations: What is the difference?," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 54(14), pages 1313-1322, December.
    19. Kayvan Kousha & Mike Thelwall, 2009. "Google book search: Citation analysis for social science and the humanities," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 60(8), pages 1537-1549, August.
    20. Junping Qiu & Jingquan Chen & Zhi Wang, 2004. "An analysis of backlink counts and Web Impact Factorsfor Chinese university websites," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 60(3), pages 463-473, August.
    21. Mike Thelwall, 2002. "Conceptualizing documentation on the Web: An evaluation of different heuristic‐based models for counting links between university Web sites," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 53(12), pages 995-1005, October.
    22. Tim Brody & Stevan Harnad & Leslie Carr, 2006. "Earlier Web usage statistics as predictors of later citation impact," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 57(8), pages 1060-1072, June.
    23. Mike Thelwall & Kayvan Kousha, 2008. "Online presentations as a source of scientific impact? An analysis of PowerPoint files citing academic journals," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 59(5), pages 805-815, March.
    24. Anthony F.J. van Raan, 2001. "Bibliometrics and internet: Some observations and expectations," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 50(1), pages 59-63, January.
    25. Jerome K. Vanclay, 2012. "Impact factor: outdated artefact or stepping-stone to journal certification?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 92(2), pages 211-238, August.
    26. Liwen Vaughan & Debora Shaw, 2008. "A new look at evidence of scholarly citation in citation indexes and from web sources," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 74(2), pages 317-330, February.
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    Cited by:

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    3. Staša Milojević, 2020. "Nature, Science, and PNAS: disciplinary profiles and impact," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 123(3), pages 1301-1315, June.
    4. Ehsan Mohammadi & Mike Thelwall & Stefanie Haustein & Vincent Larivière, 2015. "Who reads research articles? An altmetrics analysis of Mendeley user categories," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 66(9), pages 1832-1846, September.
    5. Thelwall, Mike & Fairclough, Ruth, 2015. "Geometric journal impact factors correcting for individual highly cited articles," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 9(2), pages 263-272.
    6. Milojević, Staša & Radicchi, Filippo & Bar-Ilan, Judit, 2017. "Citation success index − An intuitive pair-wise journal comparison metric," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 11(1), pages 223-231.
    7. Metwaly Ali Mohamed Eldakar, 2019. "Who reads international Egyptian academic articles? An altmetrics analysis of Mendeley readership categories," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 121(1), pages 105-135, October.
    8. Zohreh Zahedi & Rodrigo Costas & Paul Wouters, 2014. "How well developed are altmetrics? A cross-disciplinary analysis of the presence of ‘alternative metrics’ in scientific publications," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 101(2), pages 1491-1513, November.
    9. Xianwen Wang & Wenli Mao & Shenmeng Xu & Chunbo Zhang, 2014. "Usage history of scientific literature: Nature metrics and metrics of Nature publications," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 98(3), pages 1923-1933, March.
    10. Wolfgang Glänzel & Pei-Shan Chi, 2020. "The big challenge of Scientometrics 2.0: exploring the broader impact of scientific research in public health," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 125(2), pages 1011-1031, November.
    11. Hajar Sotudeh & Zahra Mazarei & Mahdieh Mirzabeigi, 2015. "CiteULike bookmarks are correlated to citations at journal and author levels in library and information science," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 105(3), pages 2237-2248, December.
    12. Benedetto Lepori & Isidro F. Aguillo & Marco Seeber, 2014. "Size of web domains and interlinking behavior of higher education institutions in Europe," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 100(2), pages 497-518, August.
    13. Milan Frederik Klus & Alexander Dilger, 2020. "Success factors of academic journals in the digital age," Business Research, Springer;German Academic Association for Business Research, vol. 13(3), pages 1115-1143, November.
    14. Ehsan Mohammadi & Mike Thelwall & Kayvan Kousha, 2016. "Can Mendeley bookmarks reflect readership? A survey of user motivations," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 67(5), pages 1198-1209, May.

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