How is science cited on the Web? A classification of google unique Web citations

Abstract

Although the analysis of citations in the scholarly literature is now an established and relatively well understood part of information science, not enough is known about citations that can be found on the Web. In particular, are there new Web types, and if so, are these trivial or potentially useful for studying or evaluating research communication? We sought evidence based upon a sample of 1,577 Web citations of the URLs or titles of research articles in 64 open-access journals from biology, physics, chemistry, and computing. Only 25% represented intellectual impact, from references of Web documents (23%) and other informal scholarly sources (2%). Many of the Web/URL citations were created for general or subject-specific navigation (45%) or for self-publicity (22%). Additional analyses revealed significant disciplinary differences in the types of Google unique Web/URL citations as well as some characteristics of scientific openaccess publishing on the Web. We conclude that the Web provides access to a new and different type of citation information, one that may therefore enable us to measure different aspects of research, and the research process in particular; but to obtain good information, the different types should be separated.

How is research blogged? A content analysis approach

“…Vaughan and Shaw's (2005) follow-up study used their 2003 scheme to classify journal articles from four fields. Kousha and Thelwall (2007) sampled web citations to open-access journals in four fields (biology, physics, chemistry, and computing). Jepsen, Seiden, Ingwersen, Björneborn, and Borlund (2004) classified content from URLs containing specific terms related to plant biology into six categories: scientific, with research-related content (e.g., research articles, preprints); scientifically related (e.g., researchers' CVs); teaching (e.g., textbooks, tutorials, student papers); low grade, which was material that did not belong with the previous groups but was related to the searched topic (e.g., commercial material); noise, which consisted of material that did not fit any of the previous categories; and unavailable, the URLs that could not be reached.…”

“…They merged the seven categories into three broader categories: research impact (e.g., in a scholarly article), other intellectual impact (e.g., course reading), and perfunctory (nonintellectual, e.g., an article listed in a bibliography site). Kousha and Thelwall (2007) concluded that "the web provides access to a new and different type of citation information, one that may therefore enable us to measure different aspects of research, and the research process in particular, but in order to obtain good information the different types should be separated" (p. 1631). Kousha and Thelwall (2007) sampled web citations to open-access journals in four fields (biology, physics, chemistry, and computing).…”

A comparison of methods for collecting web citation data for academic organizations

“…One of the main webometric techniques is impact analysis: using web-based methods to estimate the online impact of documents (Kousha & Thelwall, 2007b;Kousha, Thelwall, & Rezaie, 2010;Vaughan & Shaw, 2005), journals (Smith, 1999;Vaughan & Shaw, 2003), digital repositories (Zuccala, Thelwall, Oppenheim, & Dhiensa, 2007), researchers (Barjak, Li, & Thelwall, 2007;Cronin & Shaw, 2002), research groups (Barjak & Thelwall, 2008), departments (Chen, Newman, Newman, & Rada, 1998;Li, Thelwall, Wilkinson, & Musgrove, 2005b), universities (Aguillo, 2009;Aguillo, Granadino, Ortega, & Prieto, 2006;Qiu, Chen, & Wang, 2004;Smith, 1999), and even countries (Ingwersen, 1998;Thelwall & Zuccala, 2008).…”

A longitudinal analysis of citation distribution breadth for Chinese scholars

“…It has also become one of the most widely used bibliometric methods (Rubin 2004). The major advantages of citation analysis are its high reliability and unobtrusiveness and that its use for quantitative-driven study differs from conventional research methods, such as participant observation, interviews and questionnaires, in exploring the utilization of academic resources (Kousha and Thelwall 2007). At the same time, the Web has had a huge impact on citation analysis research.…”