How to evaluate individual researchers working in the natural and life sciences meaningfully? A proposal of methods based on percentiles of citations

Bornmann, Lutz; Marx, Werner

doi:10.1007/s11192-013-1161-y

Cited by 119 publications

(92 citation statements)

References 86 publications

(96 reference statements)

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“…As opposed to traditional citations, many altmetrics have the advantage that they permit an impact measurement relatively quickly after the publication of a work. Whereas traditional citations allow a measurement of impact at least three years after the appearance of a publication (Bornmann and Marx, 2014), this is already possible in a (significantly) shorter time scale with many altmetrics.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Usefulness of altmetrics for measuring the broader impact of research

Bornmann

2015

Aslib Journal of Info Mgmt

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Purpose -The purpose of this case study is to investigate the usefulness of altmetrics for measuring the broader impact of research. Design/methodology/approach -This case study is based on a sample of 1,082 the Public Library of Science (PLOS) journal articles recommended in F1000. The data set includes altmetrics which were provided by PLOS. The F1000 data set contains tags on papers which were assigned by experts to characterise them. Findings -The most relevant tag for altmetric research is "good for teaching", as it is assigned to papers which could be of interest to a wider circle of readers than the peers in a specialised area. One could expect papers with this tag to be mentioned more often on Facebook and Twitter than those without this tag. The results from regression models were able to confirm these expectations: papers with this tag show significantly higher Facebook and Twitter counts than papers without this tag. This clear association could not be seen with Mendeley or Figshare counts (that is with counts from platforms which are chiefly of interest in a scientific context). Originality/value -The results of the current study indicate that Facebook and Twitter, but not Figshare or Mendeley, might provide an indication of which papers are of interest to a broader circle of readers (and not only for the peers in a specialist area), and could therefore be useful for the measurement of the societal impact of research.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Usefulness of altmetrics for measuring the broader impact of research

Bornmann

2015

Aslib Journal of Info Mgmt

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“…Percentiles of citations were reported because these accommodate the skew, time -and field-dependences of citations [4]. Number of citations by rank were compared using the Kruskal-Wallis test with pairwise Wilcoxon tests at the p < 0.05 level.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Biomechanics Scholar Citations across Academic Ranks

Knudson

2015

Biomedical Human Kinetics

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SummaryStudy aim: citations to the publications of a scholar have been used as a measure of the quality or influence of their research record. A world-wide descriptive study of the citations to the publications of biomechanics scholars of various academic ranks was conducted. Material and methods: Google Scholar Citations was searched for user profiles reporting "biomechanics" as an interest area and data recorded if they had at least one citation to their publications. Total citations, academic rank, and country were recorded for 2067 scholars from 79 countries. Additional data were collected and analyzed for most cited (top 15%) biomechanics scholars holding the rank of professor. Results: there was a significant (p < 0.001) difference in the distribution of citations between all ranks, and all ranks had large variation and were positively skewed. The ranking of the most cited scholar profiles at the rank of professor was influenced by normalizing citation counts for numbers of co-authors. Conclusions: percentile rank citation data from this study may be useful to supplement peer-evaluation of biomechanics scholar's Google Scholar publication records, particularly if the number of co-authors contributing their citations is taken into account.

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“…In contrast, Scopus indexes more than 21,000 titles in the life, social, physical, and health sciences with most journal content going back to 1995 (Harzing, 2014). Additionally, the Scopus database provides a unique identification number for each author and it has been shown to be more accurate and reliable than other databases (Bornmann & Marx, 2014;Jacso, 2008Jacso, , 2011Jacso, , 2012Meho & Rogers, 2008;Meho & Yang, 2007). Given these strengths, the Scopus database was selected as one source of h index values for school psychology faculty.…”

Section: Sourcesmentioning

confidence: 99%