Validating online reference managers for scholarly impact measurement

Xuemei Li (), Mike Thelwall () and Dean Giustini ()
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Xuemei Li: York University
Mike Thelwall: University of Wolverhampton
Dean Giustini: University of British Columbia

Scientometrics, 2012, vol. 91, issue 2, No 12, 471 pages

Abstract: Abstract This paper investigates whether CiteULike and Mendeley are useful for measuring scholarly influence, using a sample of 1,613 papers published in Nature and Science in 2007. Traditional citation counts from the Web of Science (WoS) were used as benchmarks to compare with the number of users who bookmarked the articles in one of the two free online reference manager sites. Statistically significant correlations were found between the user counts and the corresponding WoS citation counts, suggesting that this type of influence is related in some way to traditional citation-based scholarly impact but the number of users of these systems seems to be still too small for them to challenge traditional citation indexes.

Keywords: Webometrics; Research evaluation; Online reference managers; Validation; Research impact; Research influence (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (42)

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DOI: 10.1007/s11192-011-0580-x

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