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Google Scholar as a cybermetric tool

Google Scholar as a cybermetric tool. Alastair G Smith Victoria University of Wellington New Zealand alastair.smith@vuw.ac.nz. Overview. Google Scholar as a cybermetric tool

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Google Scholar as a cybermetric tool

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  1. Google Scholar as a cybermetric tool Alastair G Smith Victoria University of Wellington New Zealand alastair.smith@vuw.ac.nz

  2. Overview • Google Scholar as a cybermetric tool • Used to compare web citation rates with results of a research assessment exercise: New Zealand’s Performance Based Research Fund (PBRF).

  3. Cybermetrics • Quantitative analysis of published research on the Internet • Emulates techniques used by bibliometrics in the conventional publishing environment

  4. Tools for cybermetric work • General purpose search engines, e.g. • Alta Vista • Google • Specialised cybermetric crawler, e.g. • Wolverhampton Academic Web Link Database (http://cybermetrics.wlv.ac.uk/database)

  5. General purpose search engines • Search algorithms not transparent • Priority is to provide satisfactory search, not exact result • Cover all of web, not just research material

  6. Specialised cybermetric crawler • Search algorithm publicly documented • Oriented to cybermetric purposes • Focussed on specific research institutions

  7. Google Scholar • Indexes research oriented material on the Internet (though selection criteria not published) • Includes citation information • Citations include print material referenced in Internet documents • Potential as cybermetric tool?

  8. PBRF research assessment • Research assessment exercise: NZ Tertiary institutions 2003/4 • Assessed research outputs from staff • Institution ratings include: • Total output • Quality score: average output per staff member • Ratings determine grants from Performance Based Research Fund • Benchmark to compare with cybermetric study?

  9. Specialised crawler study • Previous study (Smith & Thelwall 2005) • Compared links to NZ university web sites with PBRF rankings. • Moderate correlation: • Link count/staff cf PBRF quality score • Issues: • NZ-NZ links, ignores international linkage • Includes non-research material

  10. Google Scholar study • Searched Google Scholar for research originating from the 8 NZ universities • Citation counts for this material extracted • Compared with PBRF ratings

  11. Methodology issues with Google Scholar • Problems identifying output of institution • No total citation count provided

  12. Identifying institution • No “institution” field • Domain name search produces false drops (e.g. mirrored research ), misses research hosted at other institutions (e.g. paper presented at external conference) • Searched on words in name of institution, and location e.g. "canterbury university" OR "university of canterbury" zealand OR christchurch OR ilam

  13. Google Scholar result screen

  14. Obtaining citation count • Total citation count not displayed • Only first 1000 hits obtainable (but citation counts appear to be used in ranking) • Extracted individual citation counts with macro • Assumed citation counts for first 1000 hits a good approximation for total citation count.

  15. Results: Citations vs PBRF output

  16. Results: Hits vs PBRF output

  17. Coverage Identification of institutions Citation count Transparency Google Scholar Research on Web By keyword Individual, cannot display all hits Little documentation of algorithm, selection of sources Web of Knowledge Core journals (some digital) Specific field For individual items Sources documented Scopus Core journals + Web sites (from Scirus) Specific field “Citation tracker” only for authors Sources documented Wolverhampton Crawler Specific university web sites By domain Link counts Sources documented Comparison of cybermetric tools

  18. Pros and Cons of using Google Scholar for cybermetrics • Pros: • Good coverage of research on Web • Accessible and simple • Cons • Not transparent • Need to use ad hoc search for institution

  19. Institutional repositories • Could provide good target for specialised cybermetric crawler, if: • Standardised formats for citations etc • Standard selection criteria • Accessible to crawlers

  20. Summary • Google Scholar provides a useful tool for “quick and dirty” cybermetric work • Results have some correlation with a general research assessment • Institutional repositories may provide a useful way of evaluating institutions

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