Google Scholar: not reliable for citations counting

According this study related to Social Sciences publications,  Google Scholar provides “vastly larger citation counts than either Scopus or Web of Science when all results are taken into account, but only slightly larger counts when only scholarly journals are considered“….

The study also deals with citation counting issue, saying  that “ it is relatively easy to falsify citing references to research and create “search engine spam” which artificially inflates citation countswithin Google Scholar. While it is unclear as to whether this is occurring deliberately and if so, towhat extent, it remains an issue which should engender cautious use of search engine citation data“.

As a conclusion the study says that “ Google Scholar may not be as reliable as either Scopus or Web of Science as a stand-alone source for citation data“

Elaine M. Lasda Bergman. Finding Citations to Social Work Literature: The Relative Benefits of Using Web of Science, Scopus, or Google Scholar. The Journal of Academic Librarianship, Available online 23 October 2012

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.acalib.2012.08.002

 

Mendeley, the most extensive STM database?

UK-based start-up Mendeley has announced that the number of queries to its database from external applications has surpassed 100 million per month. More than 240 applications received for research collaboration, measurement, visualisation, semantic markup and discovery – all of which have been developed in the past year – receive a constant flow of data from Mendeley.

The information fuelling this ecosystem has been crowdsourced by the scientific community itself, somewhat like Wikipedia. Using Mendeley’s suite of document management and collaboration tools, in just three years its global community of 1.9 million researchers has created a shared database containing 65 million unique documents.

This, according to recent studies, covers 97.2 to 99.5 percent of all research articles published. Commercial databases by Thomson Reuters and Elsevier contain 49 million and 47 million unique documents respectively, but access to their databases is licensed to universities for tens of thousands of dollars per year.

More information at:

http://www.mendeley.com/

http://www.researchinformation.info/news/news_story.php?news_id=1000

 

Coming soon: the Book Impact Factor!

[News originally diffused by Pablo Iriarte]

Thomson-Reuters announces:

“The Book Citation Index in Web of Science connects a library’s book collection to powerful new discovery tools, giving researchers the ability to quickly and easily identify and access the most relevant books.

 Bringing together scholarly book, journal and conference proceedings literature within Web of Science, optimizes the powerful features of citation navigation.[...]

Completeing the Research Picture with Book Citation Index: Coverage of over 30,000 editorially selected books, starting with publication year 2005, with 10,000 new books added each year.[...]

Expose Your Collections: Link directly to your library catalogs and eBooks to increase the visibility of your valuable collections and subscriptions. [...]

Textbooks, Encyclopedias, Reference Books not included. Full indexing of Books and individually-authored Book Chapters. Capture of all fundamental bibliographic information as well as author cited references”

http://wokinfo.com/products_tools/multidisciplinary/bookcitationindex/

Scopus: “I need it to do my research!”

A former student who enjoyed Scopus in her university claims  for a personal subscription model.

“I didn’t know what I had till it was gone. During my PhD at the University of Pittsburgh, I had access to the Scopus database of citation data. I proceeded to use it for various citation analyses. I graduated and moved on, swapping that university affiliation for a collection of at least five others. None of these has access to Scopus. I miss it! I need it to do my research! (…)

Dear Scopus, you know what would make this a lot easier? The ability to buy a personal subscription. I’d buy one. I have money for that. Unfortunately, you only offer access through institutional subscriptions. I’ve talked to librarians at many of my institutions, and they aren’t keen to buy an institutional Scopus subscription… they view it as an upstart “European” also-ran to ISI Web of Science. You and I both know that isn’t true, but it is a really steep hill for me to climb to convince them, as an individual postdoc researcher. Let me have a free personal trial, let me buy a personal subscription.”

Piwowar, Heather. Scopus is better than ISI Web of Science for bulk article-level metrics. Research Remix, Online. Posted on May 8, 2011.
http://researchremix.wordpress.com/2011/05/08/scopus-vs-isi/

Thomson: the new WOK is launched

The new Web of Knowledge offers:

• a new design with a more intuitive interface
• more search options
• more analytical functions
• etc.

See the video: http://thenewwok.com/preview

PS: it is strange to see that Thomson used pictures which are close to those that Elsevier took some years ago with its “Never underestimate the importance of a librarian” campaign, means some scientists working on the field: ocean, ice, archeology, etc.

WoS Vs Scopus: which is better? studies by Intellogist

Kristin Whitman has started a serie of studies regarding Web Of Science and Scopus for the (excellent) patent community Intellogist.

“The question “which is better” is really unanswerable - first you need to decide what “better” means” she says.

Some of her findings:

• Coverage: number of active or inactive titles (2/28/2011)
  • Scopus: 29,566 titles, of 15,175 are unique
  • Web of Science: 18,843 titles, of 4,452 are unique
  • Common: 14,391
• Coverage: type of journals
  • Scopus: 93% scholarly journal – 3% Trade – 2% Report – 2 Book series
  • WoS: 98% scholarly – Book series: 2%
• Coverage: country of publication breakdown
  • Scopus: US, 30%; UK, 18%;  NL, 8%; DE, 7%; FR, 3%, etc.
  • WoS: US, 38%; UK, 17%; DE, 7%; NL, 6%; FR, 3%, etc.

To be continued…

Whitman, Kristin. Web of Science Vs. Scopus: which is better. Intellogist, Online:
http://intellogist.wordpress.com/2011/02/25/2406/

CERN has chosen Thomson WoK

WoK here stands for Web of Knowledge and is not a cooking device from China!

The prestigious swiss institution has chosen the Thomson product  after a bidding process as the main point of access to scientific literature for the researchers.

According, Information World Review: 04/02/11
http://www.iwr.co.uk/stm-and-legal/3010714/CERN-to-use-Thomson-Reuters-research-platform

Use of metrics to evaluate researchers

A long history…

Peter Jacso, one of the best experts in STM abstract databases, gives his opinion… In his latest publication, he compared 3 tools: Web of Science (WoS), Scopus and Google Scholar (GS).

A few findings and opinions:

• it is quite likely that more and more administrators will request librarians and other information professionals to churn out metrics-based research evaluation ranking lists  about individuals, departments, and colleges
• I am in favor of using metrics-based evaluation. (…) However, because of the shortcomings of these special databases for evaluating individual researchers (as opposed to citation-based subject searching), I am also very much against  replacing peer-based evaluation by bibliometric, scientometric and/or informetric indicators in ranking individual researchers, groups of researchers, institutions and countries by the traditional bibliometric indicators (total number of citations, average number of citations per publications), and the new ones alone that combine the quantitative and qualitative measures in a single number, such as the original  h-index and its many, increasingly more refined variants
• I have also concerns about the level of search skill and the time needed from librarians and other information professionals to engage –…- in the very time consuming and sophisticated  procedures. (…) Still, even such a highly qualified group can leave some methodological issues unexplained,  make mistakes in the search process and/or in the compilation of data and/or in the data entry process
• Google-Scholar based metrics: The reason for this indifference is that the hit counts and the citation counts delivered by Google Scholar are not worth the paper they are printed on. Its metadata remain to be a metadata mega mess (Jacso, 2010), and its citation matching algorithm is worse than those of the cheapest dating services

 

Jacso, Peter. Savvy Searching. Online Information Review, 34 (6) pp. 972-982.

Drug literature: Scopus would be a better choice than WoS and Medline

According a recent study…

Findings:

- Based on the results from this limited (atorvastatin (Lipitor) and olanzapine) but by no means atypical study of comparative strengths and degree of coverage, the best option for retrieving the largest numbers of articles on a particular drug in the literature would be to use both Scopus and Web of Science, as these two databases complement each other with respect to the journal coverage. MEDLINE retrieved much smaller numbers of documents in all searches and should be used only when the other two databases are not available

- The comparison of the total and annual output of documents obtained from the databases showed that Scopus performed better than the other two databases in these respects

-  This article shows that significant differences existed not only in the journal titles but also in the number of documents that the databases retrieved from the same journals. Scopus and WoS complemented well each other in terms of journal coverage, which makes using both of them the best option for comprehensive retrieval of the drug literature

Conclusions:

- Since the introduction of Scopus in 2004, many users and librarians have been trying to evaluate and compare it to WoS. The much easier to navigate interface and the possibility of viewing immediately, on the same screen, the results from analyzing the search results make Scopus a very attractive option for searching the drug literature.

- Based on the results from this study, the best option for comprehensive retrieval of the drug literature would be to use both Scopus and WoS, as these databases complement each other well with respect to the journal coverage. If an institution has to make a decision to choose between Scopus and WoS, Scopus would be a better choice for this kind of literature. Since  MEDLINE has found significantly fewer documents than the other two databases, it should be used only when these two databases are not available

Baykoucheva, Svetla(2010) ‘Selecting a Database for Drug Literature Retrieval: A Comparison of MEDLINE, Scopus, and Web of Science’, Science & Technology Libraries, 29: 4, 276-288

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0194262X.2010.522946

Google Scholar Vs Web of Science: McDonalds Vs a Gourmet restaurant?!

The study below is probably the best I ever read (and I have read some!) about Google Scholar compared to paid services…

Hightower, Christy & Caldwell, Christy. Shifting Sands: Science Researchers on Google Scholar, Web of Science, and PubMed, with Implications for Library Collections Budgets. Issues in Science and Technology Librarianship, Fall 2010. Online : http://www.istl.org/10-fall/refereed3.html

Abstract:
The goal was to discover which article databases science researchers prefer and why, how much Google Scholar and other free article databases are being used, how use and preferences for Google Scholar compare to those for Web of Science (one big costly competitor to Google Scholar) and how researchers would react to being given a choice between spending scarce library resources on keeping article databases or on keeping more journal subscriptions.

While Google Scholar is favored for its ease of use and speed, those who prefer Web of Science feel more confident about the quality of their results than do those who prefer Google Scholar. When asked to choose between paying for article database access or paying for journal subscriptions, 66% of researchers chose to keep journal subscriptions, while 34% chose to keep article databases

Not all traditional fee-based databases (e.g., Web of Science) and not all subject-specific article databases (e.g., PubMed), are in a “death spiral.”.

Google Scholar, while very popular, is used as a secondary database more often than as a primary one.

Researchers value the ease and speed of Google Scholar, but may also perceive its quality and precision limitations.

Google Scholar is a significant database in science and should not be discounted, but it is not likely to replace Web of Science in either the researcher or the librarian’s estimation until its quality improves. 

 Background:
In the area of collections, librarians have many opinions regarding the importance of continuing to pay for articles versus the importance of keeping the tools used to find those articles (such as article databases). One of the assertions stated by librarians and faculty alike is that, “all researchers use Google Scholar,” and that, “soon they won’t use licensed databases.”

Ben Wagner, a librarian at the University of Buffalo, made a statement that rings true: “We are running a gourmet restaurant, but all our patrons are flocking to McDonalds.” If so, libraries could cancel some of their “gourmet” databases in order to save some journal subscriptions.

Methods:
Online survey to University of California Santa Cruz in 2009, students and staff. 220 responses.

 Results:

• Science researchers are still using article databases heavily. More than half of the researchers used them daily (52.3%) and another third used them every week (33.2%).
• The survey showed that researchers used an average of 2.55 databases each.
• When asked to choose the type of database they used the most, multidisciplinary databases were preferred (59.9%)
• As predicted, Web of Science and Google Scholar tied for first place as most often mentioned in the “used routinely” category (with 66.8% and 64.4% of researchers voting for each respectively).
• PubMed (used by 33.7% of all researchers) emerged as the only subject-specific database in this group to rival the two multidisciplinary databases in popularity.
• Biologists in the study chose PubMed (38.6%) and Web of Science (35.2%) about equally as their single most used database, with Google Scholar coming in second place (18.2%).
• “Everyone Uses Google Scholar” Librarians and faculty alike often assert that “all researchers use Google Scholar.” Based on this study, this is essentially correct. 83% of researchers had used Google Scholar and an additional 13% had not used it but would like to try it.
• Of those who had used Google Scholar, almost three quarters of them (73%) found it useful.
• It’s apparent that a large proportion of the study’s Google Scholar users are using it as a secondary source rather than as their primary one
• When asked to choose between Web of Science and Google Scholar, 47.5% said they preferred Web of Science and only 31.1% preferred Google Scholar
• Google Scholar had a larger percentage of researchers preferring it because “it’s easier to use” and “it’s faster.”
• No significant difference in the perceived value of times cited data was expected between researchers who use Web of Science most and those who use Google Scholar most. Surprisingly, the perceived value of times cited information in general was not as high as predicted
• The availability of alerts does not appear to be a strong factor in database choice between Web of Science and Google Scholar