Whose Metrics? On Building Citation, Usage and Access Metrics as Information Service for Scholars

"As the Internet has enhanced the collection and provision of citation, usage and access metrics, the challenge lies neither in the technology nor the method, but in constructing databases that deliver services of value to the scholar. However, the development of metrics has hitherto been driven by the needs of external research assessment (governments and funders), while publishers and libraries have focussed on their own needs (e.g. journal impact and usage factors).
Scholars often criticize research assessment and the use of particular metrics as a zero-sum game whose undesirable consequences far outweigh the benefits. However, this is not to be confused with a general prejudice against metrics, which are principally compatible with the scholarly recognition and rewards system. But it does indicate that current metric information services often do not serve the needs of scholars.
The question everybody should be asking is: What kind of metric information services would serve scholars?"

(source: Chris Armbruster, SSRN, 31/08/09)

The Evaluation of Research by Scientometric Indicators
(Peter Vinkler, Woodhead Publishing Limited-Chandos Publishing, 2009)

"Aimed at academics, academic managers and administrators, professionals in scientometrics, information scientists and science policy makers at all levels. Reviews the principles, methods and indicators of scientometric evaluation of information processes in science and assessment of the publication activity of individuals, teams, institutes and countries. The book provides scientists, science officers, librarians and students with basic and advanced knowledge on evaluative scientometrics. Especially great stress is laid on the methods applicable in practice and on the clarification of quantitative aspects of impact of scientific publications measured by citation indicators."

(source: liste Sigmetrics)

Frozen Footprints

"Bibliometrics has the ambitious goal of measuring science. To this end, it exploits the way science is disseminated trough scientific publications and the resulting citation network of scientific papers. We survey the main historical contributions to the field, the most interesting bibliometric indicators, and the most popular bibliometric data sources. Moreover, we discuss distributions commonly used to model bibliometric phenomena and give an overview of methods to build bibliometric maps of science."

(source: Massimo Franceschet / déposé sur arXiv, 17/07/09)

On the relation between the WoS impact factor, the Eigenfactor, the SCImago Journal Rank, the Article Influence Score and the journal h-index

"Four alternatives to the journal Impact Factor (IF) indicator are compared to find out their similarities. Together with the IF, the SCImago Journal Rank indicator (SJR), the EigenfactorTM score, the Article InfluenceTM score and the journal h-index of 77 journals from more than ten fields were collected. Results show that although those indicators are calculated with different methods and even use different databases, they are strongly correlated with the WoS IF and among each other. These findings corroborate results published by several colleagues and show the feasibility of using free alternatives to the Web of Science for evaluating scientific journals."

(source: Rousseau, Ronald and STIMULATE 8 , Group, 2009 [Preprint] / déposé sur E-LIS, 19/07/09)

Web of Science and Scopus: A Comparative Review of Content and Searching Capabilities

"[] In particular, this review will compare and contrast the content of the two databases by comparing (a) the comprehensiveness in coverage of 110 journals over a broad spectrum of fields to look at their completeness in indexing and their timeliness in updating; (b) the retrieval of searches based on seven departmental affiliations from one university, highlighting the number of articles retrieved, their citation counts and H-indexes (the value of H is equal to the number of papers [N] that have N or more citations); (c) the citation counts for 10 journal articles; and (d) publication counts from six universities. The usefulness of both databases in studying an institution’s research output and aiding in collection assessment/development activities will be discussed. The article will also provide methods that might be useful for extracting information from these databases that could be useful for collection development purposes. In addition, it will focus on the ease of use and understanding of the databases for the average user, capabilities available for searching, and the unique features each offers. [...]"

(source: The Charleston Advisor, Volume 11, Number 1, July 2009 , pp. 5-18(14))

Is scientific literature subject to a sell-by-date? A general methodology to analyze the durability of scientific documents

"The study of the citation histories and ageing of documents are topics that have been addressed from several perspectives, especially in the analysis of documents with delayed recognition or sleeping beauties. However, there is no general methodology that can be extensively applied for different time periods and/or research fields. In this paper a new methodology for the general analysis of the ageing and durability of scientific papers is presented. This methodology classifies documents into three general types: Delayed documents, which receive the main part of their citations later than normal documents; Flash in the pans, which receive citations immediately after their publication but they are not cited in the long term; and Normal documents, documents with a typical distribution of citations over time. These three types of durability have been analyzed considering the whole population of documents in the Web of Science with at least 5 external citations (i.e. not considering self-citations). Several patterns related to the three types of durability have been found and the potential for further research of the developed methodology is discussed."

(source: Rodrigo Costas, Thed N. van Leeuwen, Anthony F.J. van Raan / déposé sur arXiv, 10/07/09)

Infocentre recherche : système d’information, outil d’aide au pilotage de la recherche d’un établissement de recherche. Application à l’Université Paul Cézanne Aix-Marseille III

"Dans un contexte international d’évaluation de la recherche, la France semble s’engager, non sans critiques, dans un processus d’évaluation quantitative qui viendrait compléter, sinon remplacer, l’évaluation traditionnelle par les pairs.
Mais les études infométriques basées sur l’exploitation des grandes bases de données scientifiques internationales sont perturbées par la complexité de l’organisation de la recherche française. Par ailleurs ces bases de données sont inadaptées à l’étude de structures telles que les établissements et les unités de recherche locales.
Après une description de l’existant et une étude des besoins, cette thèse expose la conception et l’élaboration d’un Système d’Information, outil d’aide au pilotage de la recherche. S’appuyant sur l’utilisation d’un CMS (Système de gestion du contenu) de type extranet collaboratif, ce système d’information, appelé Infocentre Recherche, est totalement paramétrable "en temps réel". Sa souplesse lui permet de s’adapter dynamiquement aux spécificités de l’établissement ou de l’unité de recherche considéré. Ainsi cet Infocentre Recherche est un instrument capable de dresser en continu un "état des lieux" ou un "tableau de bord" pour ces structures. Plusieurs exemples en sont donnés. L’accent est mis sur le fait que les structures de recherche locales, comme d’ailleurs les structures nationales, ont moins besoin d’évaluation que de valorisation de la recherche."

(source: N. Barts, thèse, Université Paul Cézanne Aix-Marseille III, 07/07/09 / via Revues.org)

Citing and Reading Behaviours in High-Energy Physics. How a Community Stopped Worrying about Journals and Learned to Love Repositories

"Contemporary scholarly discourse follows many alternative routes in addition to the three-century old tradition of publication in peer-reviewed journals. The field of High- Energy Physics (HEP) has explored alternative communication strategies for decades, initially via the mass mailing of paper copies of preliminary manuscripts, then via the inception of the first online repositories and digital libraries.
This field is uniquely placed to answer recurrent questions raised by the current trends in scholarly communication: is there an advantage for scientists to make their work available through repositories, often in preliminary form? Is there an advantage to publishing in Open Access journals? Do scientists still read journals or do they use digital repositories?
The analysis of citation data demonstrates that free and immediate online dissemination of preprints creates an immense citation advantage in HEP, whereas publication in Open Access journals presents no discernible advantage. In addition, the analysis of clickstreams in the leading digital library of the field shows that HEP scientists seldom read journals, preferring preprints instead."

(source: Anne Gentil-Beccot et al., arXiv, 01/07/09)

Tiens, Elsevier se lance dans la bibliométrie cartographique... C'est Thomson/ISI qui doit être content...

Elsevier Launches SciVal Spotlight

"SciVal Spotlight uses an innovative visualization technique to produce customized maps that provide graphical views of an institution's performance over time and across scientific fields, focusing on specific topical areas. By pinpointing a university's topical strengths and identifying leading researchers and institutions in each area, the tool is designed to help academic decision-makers optimize funding allocations and enhance hiring and collaboration decisions. [...]"

(source: DigitalKoans, 30/06/09)

"The Healthcare & Science business of Thomson Reuters today announced the release of the 2008 Journal Citation Reports, available to subscribers of the JCR. These metrics have come to define journal performance across disciplines and institutions worldwide. The 2008 JCR contains more than 400 new titles, including more than 350 titles that will have their first published Journal Impact Factor.

The release of the 2008 Journal Citation Reports includes the first-ever update to the newly introduced Five Year Impact Factor and Eigenfactor™ Metrics in JCR Web. Eigenfactor™ Metrics use citing journal data from the entire JCR file to reflect the prestige and citation influence of journals by considering scholarly literature as a network of journal-to-journal relationships. [...]"

(source)