Can Mendeley bookmarks reflect readership? A survey of user motivations

Ehsan Mohammadi, Mike Thelwall and Kayvan Kousha

Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, 2016, vol. 67, issue 5, 1198-1209

Abstract: Although Mendeley bookmarking counts appear to correlate moderately with conventional citation metrics, it is not known whether academic publications are bookmarked in Mendeley in order to be read or not. Without this information, it is not possible to give a confident interpretation of altmetrics derived from Mendeley. In response, a survey of 860 Mendeley users shows that it is reasonable to use Mendeley bookmarking counts as an indication of readership because most (55%) users with a Mendeley library had read or intended to read at least half of their bookmarked publications. This was true across all broad areas of scholarship except for the arts and humanities (42%). About 85% of the respondents also declared that they bookmarked articles in Mendeley to cite them in their publications, but some also bookmark articles for use in professional (50%), teaching (25%), and educational activities (13%). Of course, it is likely that most readers do not record articles in Mendeley and so these data do not represent all readers. In conclusion, Mendeley bookmark counts seem to be indicators of readership leading to a combination of scholarly impact and wider professional impact.

Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (26)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.23477

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:bla:jinfst:v:67:y:2016:i:5:p:1198-1209

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=2330-1635

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology from Association for Information Science & Technology
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().