Category: Scholarly Metrics

"Do Download Reports Reliably Measure Journal Usage? Trusting the Fox to Count Your Hens?"

Alex Wood-Doughty, Ted Bergstrom, and Douglas G. Steigerwald have published "Do Download Reports Reliably Measure Journal Usage? Trusting the Fox to Count Your Hens?" in College & Research Libraries.

Here's an excerpt:

Download rates of academic journals have joined citation counts as commonly used indicators of the value of journal subscriptions. While citations reflect worldwide influence, the value of a journal subscription to a single library is more reliably measured by the rate at which it is downloaded by local users. If reported download rates accurately measure local usage, there is a strong case for using them to compare the cost-effectiveness of journal subscriptions. We examine data for nearly 8,000 journals downloaded at the ten universities in the University of California system during a period of six years. We find that controlling for number of articles, publisher, and year of download, the ratio of downloads to citations differs substantially among academic disciplines. After adding academic disciplines to the control variables, there remain substantial “publisher effects”, with some publishers reporting significantly more downloads than would be predicted by the characteristics of their journals. These cross-publisher differences suggest that the currently available download statistics, which are supplied by publishers, are not sufficiently reliable to allow libraries to make subscription decisions based on price and reported downloads, at least without making an adjustment for publisher effects in download reports.

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"Publication Modalities ‘Article in Press’ and ‘Open Access’ in Relation to Journal Average Citation"

Sara M. González-Betancor and Pablo Dorta-González have self-archived "Publication Modalities 'Article in Press' and 'Open Access' in Relation to Journal Average Citation."

Here's an excerpt:

There has been a generalization in the use of two publication practices by scientific journals during the past decade: 1. 'article in press' or early view, which allows access to the accepted paper before its formal publication in an issue; 2. 'open access', which allows readers to obtain it freely and free of charge. This paper studies the influence of both publication modalities on the average impact of the journal and its evolution over time. It tries to identify the separate effect of access on citation into two major parts: early view and selection effect, managing to provide some evidence of the positive effect of both. Scopus is used as the database and CiteScore as the measure of journal impact. The prevalence of both publication modalities is quantified. Differences in the average impact factor of group of journals, according to their publication modalities, are tested. The evolution over time of the citation influence, from 2011 to 2016, is also analysed. Finally, a linear regression to explain the correlation of these publication practices with the CiteScore in 2016, in a ceteris paribus context, is estimated. Our main findings show evidence of a positive correlation between average journal impact and advancing the publication of accepted articles, moreover this correlation increases over time. The open access modality, in a ceteris paribus context, also correlates positively with average journal impact.

Research Data Curation Bibliography, Version 10 | Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

"Developing a Research Data Policy Framework for All Journals and Publishers"

Iain Hrynaszkiewicz et al. have self-archived "Developing a Research Data Policy Framework for All Journals and Publishers."

Here's an excerpt:

More journals and publishers—and funding agencies and institutions—are introducing research data policies. But as the prevalence of policies increases, there is potential to confuse researchers and support staff with numerous or conflicting policy requirements. We define and describe 14 features of journal research data policies and arrange these into a set of six standard policy types or tiers, which can be adopted by journals and publishers to promote data sharing in a way that encourages good practice and is appropriate for their audience's perceived needs. Policy features include coverage of topics such as data citation, data repositories, data availability statements, data standards and formats, and peer review of research data. These policy features and types have been created by reviewing the policies of multiple scholarly publishers, which collectively publish more than 10,000 journals, and through discussions and consensus building with multiple stakeholders in research data policy via the Data Policy Standardisation and Implementation Interest Group of the Research Data Alliance. Implementation guidelines for the standard research data policies for journals and publishers are also provided, along with template policy texts which can be implemented by journals in their Information for Authors and publishing workflows. We conclude with a call for collaboration across the scholarly publishing and wider research community to drive further implementation and adoption of consistent research data policies.

Research Data Curation Bibliography, Version 10 | Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

"The Citation Advantage of Linking Publications to Research Data"

Giovanni Colavizza et al. have self-archived "The Citation Advantage of Linking Publications to Research Data."

Here's an excerpt:

We consider 531,889 journal articles published by PLOS and BMC which are part of the PubMed Open Access collection, categorize their data availability statements according to their content and analyze the citation advantage of different statement categories via regression. We find that, following mandated publisher policies, data availability statements have become common by now, yet statements containing a link to a repository are still just a fraction of the total. We also find that articles with these statements, in particular, can have up to 25.36% higher citation impact on average: an encouraging result for all publishers and authors who make the effort of sharing their data.

Research Data Curation Bibliography, Version 10 | Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

"A Bibliometrics Analysis on Big Data Research (2009–2018)"

Zeshui Xu and Dejian Yu have published "A Bibliometrics Analysis on Big Data Research (2009–2018)" in the Journal of Data, Information and Management.

Here's an excerpt:

This paper uses the bibliometric analysis and the visual analysis methods to systematically study and analyze the big data publications included in the Science Citation Index (SCI) and Social Science Citation Index (SSCI) databases.

Research Data Curation Bibliography, Version 9 | Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

"Same Question, Different World: Replicating an Open Access Research Impact Study"

Julie Arendt, Bettina Peacemaker, and Hillary Miller have published "Same Question, Different World: Replicating an Open Access Research Impact Study" in College & Research Libraries.

Here's an excerpt:

To examine changes in the open access landscape over time, this study partially replicated Kristin Antelman's 2004 study of open access citation advantage. Results indicated open access articles still have a citation advantage. For three of the four disciplines examined, the most common sites hosting freely available articles were independent sites, such as academic social networks or article sharing sites. For the same three disciplines, more than 70% of the open access copies were publishers' PDFs. The major difference from Antelman's is the increase in the number of freely available articles that appear to be in violation of publisher policies.

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"From Closed to Open Access: A Case Study of Flipped Journals"

Fakhri Momeni et al. have self-archived "From Closed to Open Access: A Case Study of Flipped Journals."

Here's an excerpt:

The aim of this paper is to show changes in the number of published articles and citations after the flipping of a journal. We analysed a set of 171 journals in the Web of Science (WoS) which flipped to open access. In addition to comparing the number of articles, average relative citation (ARC) and normalized impact factor (IF) are applied, respectively, as bibliometric indicators at the article and journal level, to trace the transformation of flipped journals covered. Our results show that flipping mostly has had positive effects on journal's IF. But it has had no obvious citation advantage for the articles. We also see a decline in the number of published articles after flipping. We can conclude that flipping to open access can improve the performance of journals, despite decreasing the tendency of authors to submit their articles and no better citation advantages for articles.

Research Data Curation Bibliography, Version 9 | Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

"Bringing Citations and Usage Metrics Together to Make Data Count"

Helena Cousijn et al. have published "Bringing Citations and Usage Metrics Together to Make Data Count" in Data Science Journal.

Here's an excerpt:

Over the last years, many organizations have been working on infrastructure to facilitate sharing and reuse of research data. This means that researchers now have ways of making their data available, but not necessarily incentives to do so. Several Research Data Alliance (RDA) working groups have been working on ways to start measuring activities around research data to provide input for new Data Level Metrics (DLMs). These DLMs are a critical step towards providing researchers with credit for their work. In this paper, we describe the outcomes of the work of the Scholarly Link Exchange (Scholix) working group and the Data Usage Metrics working group. The Scholix working group developed a framework that allows organizations to expose and discover links between articles and datasets, thereby providing an indication of data citations. The Data Usage Metrics group works on a standard for the measurement and display of Data Usage Metrics. Here we explain how publishers and data repositories can contribute to and benefit from these initiatives. Together, these contributions feed into several hubs that enable data repositories to start displaying DLMs. Once these DLMs are available, researchers are in a better position to make their data count and be rewarded for their work.

Research Data Curation Bibliography, Version 9 | Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

"The Relationship between Usage and Citations in an Open Access Mega Journal"

Barbara McGillivray and Mathias Astell have self-archived "The Relationship between Usage and Citations in an Open Access Mega Journal."

Here's an excerpt:

How does usage of an article relate to the number of citations it accrues? Does the timeframe in which an article is used (and how much that article is used) have an effect on when and how much that article is cited? What role does an article's subject area play in the relationship between usage and citations? This paper aims to answer these questions through an observational study of usage and citation data collected about a multidisciplinary, open access mega journal, Scientific Reports. We find that while the direct correlation between usage and citations is only moderate at best, the relationship between how early and how much an article is used and how early it is cited is much clearer. What is more, we find that when an article is cited earlier it is also cited more often, leading to the assertion that if an article is more highly accessed early on, it is more likely to be cited earlier and more often.

Research Data Curation Bibliography, Version 9 | Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

"BISG Releases Draft White Paper on Open Access Ebook Usage"

The Book Industry Study Group has released Building a Trusted Framework for Coordinating OA Monograph Usage Data.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

This funded project is designed to identify the challenges in understanding the usage of OA ebooks, suggest some opportunities for resolving them, and create a framework for future action through community consultation. It focuses on the challenges of identifying and aggregating relevant information from different platforms, analyzing what has been gathered in ways that respect user privacy, and communicating relevant information about usage to stakeholders.

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