On the bibliometric coordinates of four different research fields in Geography

Juan Gorraiz (), Christian Gumpenberger () and Thomas Glade ()
Additional contact information
Juan Gorraiz: University of Vienna
Christian Gumpenberger: University of Vienna
Thomas Glade: University of Vienna

Scientometrics, 2016, vol. 107, issue 2, No 31, 873-897

Abstract: Abstract This study is a bibliometric analysis of the highly complex research discipline Geography. In order to identify the most popular and most cited publication channels, to reveal publication strategies, and to analyse the discipline’s coverage within publications, the three main data sources for citation analyses, namely Web of Science, Scopus and Google Scholar, have been utilized. This study is based on publication data collected for four individual evaluation exercises performed at the University of Vienna and related to four different subfields: Geoecology, Social and Economic Geography, Demography and Population Geography, and Economic Geography. The results show very heterogeneous and individual publication strategies, even in the same research fields. Monographs, journal articles and book chapters are the most cited document types. Differences between research fields more related to the natural sciences than to the social sciences are clearly visible, but less considerable when taking into account the higher number of co-authors. General publication strategies seem to be established for both natural science and social sciences, however, with significant differences. While in natural science mainly publications in international peer-reviewed scientific journals matter, the focus in social sciences is rather on book chapters, reports and monographs. Although an “iceberg citation model” is suggested, citation analyses for monographs, book chapters and reports should be conducted separately and should include complementary data sources, such as Google Scholar, in order to enhance the coverage and to improve the quality of the visibility and impact analyses. This is particularly important for social sciences related research within Geography.

Keywords: Citation data sources; Coverage; Google Scholar; Web of Science; Scopus; Geography; Natural sciences; Social sciences; Citation analysis; Publication strategies (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11192-016-1864-y Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:scient:v:107:y:2016:i:2:d:10.1007_s11192-016-1864-y

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/11192

DOI: 10.1007/s11192-016-1864-y

Access Statistics for this article

Scientometrics is currently edited by Wolfgang Glänzel

More articles in Scientometrics from Springer, Akadémiai Kiadó
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().