Susanne Mikki

Comparing Google Scholar and ISI Web of Science for Earth Sciences

In order to measure the degree to which Google Scholar can compete with bibliographical databases, search results from this database is compared with Thomson’s ISI WoS (Institute for Scientific Information, Web of Science). For earth science literature 85% of documents indexed by ISI WoS were recalled by Google Scholar. The rank of records displayed in Google Scholar and ISI WoS, is compared by means of Spearman’s footrule. For impact measures the h-index is investigated. Similarities in measures were significant for the two sources.

Digital Presence of Norwegian Scholars on Academic Network Sites—Where and Who Are They?

The use of academic profiling sites is becoming more common, and emerging technologies boost researchers’ visibility and exchange of ideas. In our study we compared profiles at five different profiling sites. These five sites are ResearchGate, Academia.edu, Google Scholar Citations, ResearcherID and ORCID. The data set is enriched by demographic information including age, gender, position and affiliation, which are provided by the national CRIS-system in Norway. We find that approximately 37% of researchers at the University of Bergen have at least one profile, the prevalence being highest (> 40%) for members at the Faculty of Psychology and the Faculty of Social Sciences. Across all disciplines, ResearchGate is the most widely used platform. However, within Faculty of Humanities, Academia.edu is the preferred one. Researchers are reluctant to maintain multiple profiles, and there is little overlap between different services. Age turns out to be a poor indicator for presence in the investigated profiling sites, women are underrepresented and professors together with PhD students are the most likely profile holders. We next investigated the correlation between bibliometric measures, such as publications and citations, and user activities, such as downloads and followers. We find different bibliometric indicators to correlate strongly within individual platforms and across platforms. There is however less agreement between the traditional bibliometric and social activity indicators.

Scholarly Publications beyond Pay-walls. Increased Citation Advantage for Open Publishing

First, we aim to determine the total amount of scholarly articles freely available on the internet. Second, we aim to prove whether there exists a citation advantage for open publishing. The total scholarly publication output of Norway is indexed in Cristin, the Current Information System in Norway. Based on these data, we searched Google Scholar by either DOIs or titles and denoted a document as open available (OAv), when a link to a full-text was provided. We analysed the extracted data by publishing year, citations, availability and provider. Based on additional information indexed in Cristin, we furthermore analysed the data by year, institution, publisher and discipline. We find that the total share of freely available articles is 68%. Articles not available belong to prestigious publishers such as Elsevier, Springer, Routledge and Universitetsforlaget (the largest Norwegian academic publisher), which may be particularly essential for scholars worldwide. The largest provider, according to Google Scholar’s main link provision, is ResearchGate. In addition, institutional repositories play a major role in posting free article versions. Articles belonging to natural sciences and technology, and medicine and health were more likely to be open than articles belonging to the social sciences and humanities. Their respective OAv-shares are 72, 58 and 55%. We find a clear citation advantage for open publishing; on average, these documents received twice as many citations, indicating that open access is the future in publishing. This study is limited to scholarly articles only. Books and book chapters, which are usual publication formats for the humanities and social sciences, are excluded. Results do therefore not adequately reflect the situation for these disciplines. Furthermore, this study is limited to documents freely available on the internet, independent of the “legal” status of the posted full-text. With the data at hand, we were not able to distinguish between gold, green, hybrid, purely pay-walled and illicitly posted documents. Usually, articles indexed in Web of Science or SCOPUS are objects of investigation. However, these databases do not sufficiently cover the humanities and social sciences, and therefore cannot be representative of the total scholarly article output. This study captures the total article output of a country, independent on discipline and provides new insight into open publishing.

Filter bubbles in interdisciplinary research: a case study on climate and society

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to compare the content of Web of Science (WoS) and Google Scholar (GS) by searching the interdisciplinary field of climate and ancient societies. The authors aim at analyzing the retrieved documents by open availability, received citations, co-authors and type of publication. Design/methodology/approach The authors searched the services by a defined set of keyword. Data were retrieved and analyzed using a variety of bibliometric tools such as Publish or Perish, Sci2Tool and Gephi. In order to determine the proportion of open full texts based on the WoS result, the authors relocated the records in GS, using an off-campus internet connection. Findings The authors found that the top 1,000 downloadable and analyzable GS items matched poorly with the items retrieved by WoS. Based on this approach (subject searching), the services appeared complementary rather than similar. Even though the first search results differ considerably by service, almost each single WoS title could be located in GS. Based on GS’s full text recognition, the authors found 74 percent of WoS items openly available and the citation median of these was twice as high as for documents behind paywalls. Research limitations/implications Even though the study is a case study, the authors believe that findings are transferable to other interdisciplinary fields. The share of freely available documents, however, may depend on the investigated field and its culture toward open publishing. Practical implications Discovering the literature of interdisciplinary fields puts scholars in a challenging situation and requires a better understanding of the existing infrastructures. The authors hope that the paper contributes to that and can advise the research and library communities. Originality/value In light of an overwhelming and exponentially growing amount of literature, the bibliometric approach is new in a library context.

Increased impact for Open Publishing

Watch the VIDEO here. Presenter - Susanne Mikki. Purpose Based on the scholarly output in Norway, we aim to determine the total amount of articles freely available online, and prove whether there exists a citation advantage for these. We also investigate whether these articles receive more mentions on social platforms such as tweets or blogposts. Design The total scholarly publication output of Norway is indexed in CERES, the Current Information System in Norway. Based on these publication data, we searched a) Google Scholar and denoted a document as freely available, when a link to a full-text was provided, and b) altmetric.com to detect mentions of these articles. We analyzed the extracted data by publishing year, citations, availability, provider and mentions on different platforms. Findings Dependent on subject field, we find that almost 70 % of all articles are freely available. Articles behind paywalls belong to the most prestigious publishers such as Elsevier, Springer, Routledge and Universitetsforlaget (the main Norwegian academic publisher). According to Google Scholar’s link resolver, ResearchGate and academia.edu are the most frequent providers. In addition, institutional repositories seem to play a major role in posting free article versions. We find a clear advantage for open publishing; on average, these documents received almost 30 % more mentions on social media platforms and twice as many citations, indicating that open access is the future in publishing.