2. Agenda Citation searching – an introduction What is bibliometrics? Web of Science What is Journal ImpactFactor? Journal Citation Reports Criticism of IF and some alternatives
4. Bibliometrics Citation analysis in one method used in bibliometrics By analyzing citations at article level you can estimate the popularity and impact of specific articles and authors By counting citations at journal level you can calculate the Journal Impact Factor
5. Exercise: Web of Science Do a search on your own subject (one or two keywords only) Sort by Times Cited How many times has the most cited research article been cited? Did you know about this article before?
6. h-index Hirsch-index The value of h is equal to the number of papers (n) in the list that have n or more citations Example: An h-index of 4 means that that you have 4 articles that have been cited at least 4 times.
7. Exercise: Web of Science Which article by an Alnarp researcher is the most cited? Use Author Finder to find all articles by your supervisor (or yourself) What is the h-index?
8. Exercise: Scopus Do a search on your own subject (one or two keywords only) Sort by citations Is the most cited article the same as in Web of Science? Has it been cited by other scientific web sources (theses, dissertations etc)?
10. Ohter JCR measures 5-Year Impact Factor The impact factor calculated for 5 years instead of 2 Immediacy Index How many times articles have been cited within one year. Indicates which journals are publishing “hot” articles Cited Half-Life The median age of the journal’s articles cited in the current JCR year. Indicates the long-termvalue of the articles
11. Exercise: Journal Citation Reports Select to view all journals in your own subject area Which journal has the highest Impact Factor in this subject? Did you expect this journal to be in top?
12. Criticism of IF Coverage English language bias Books are not included Subject differences Citation behavior varies between subject areas Methodological flaws Negative citations Self-citations Misprints and title changes Misuse Authors and editors manipulate the IF by strategic publishing and in-house citations
13. Alternatives: journal level Eigenfactor Includes more sources, not only journal articles Measures citations to articles published in the last 5 years Citations from highly-ranked journals are given a higher value, similar to Google’s PageRank algorithm
14. Alternatives: journal level SCImago Journal Rankwww.scimagojr.com Based on citation data from Scopus Measures citations to articles published in the last 3 years Uses a Google-like ranking algorithm, just like the Eigenfactor Example:SCImago Journal Rankings
16. Exercise: SCImago Look at the journal rankings in your own subject area Compare with the Impact Factor in JCR Are there any differences?
17. Alternatives: articlelevel Usage statistics Open Access journals often use download statistics as an indicator BioMed Central www.biomedcentral.com PLoSwww.plos.org
18. Alternatives: articlelevel Faculty of 1000 f1000.com Qualitativeevaluation Evaluates the most important articles in biology and medicine Researchers and cliniciansrates and comment on papers they read Example:f1000.com/3509957
19. Summary Citation searching is useful as an alternative to keyword searching Bibliometrics give you comparable quantitative data about scientific publications The usefulness and reliability of the methods have been questioned New methods for evaluation have arisen, quantitative and qualitative, but have yet to gain wider acceptance as replacement for citation counts and Impact Factor
20. Further readings SLU University Library (2010). Bibliometrics. Accessible: http://www.slu.se/en/library/publish/eindex/ Vice-chancellor's decision about affiliation ... 2010-01-02 (Swedish) Garfield, E. (1994). The concept of citation indexing : a unique and innovative tool for navigating the research literature. Accessible: http://thomsonreuters.com/products_services/science/free/essays/concept_of_citation_indexing/
21. “Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted” Albert Einstein
