Presentation covering introduction to bibliometrics. Suggested audience: PGRs, early career researchers, academic staff wanting refresher, research support staff

1. A bit on bibliometrics
Science Librarian
Rachel Henderson
(CHE / PHA / CMP / MTH)
Rachel.Henderson@uea.ac.uk
Jane Helgesen
Information Skills Librarian
j.helgesen@uea.ac.uk

2. Session aims
Why do you need to know this?
Introduction to terminology
Exploring the resources

3. Why do you need to know this?
Scholarly communication: tracing the history and
evolution of ideas from one scholar to another
Can be seen to measure the scholarly influence of
articles; journals; scholars
Used with other factors in UK Research Excellence
Framework (REF) to determine importance of
research and award money to the institution

4. Garfield’s metrics
Eugene Garfield: ‘Father of citation analysis’
developed the first bibliometric index tools
Citation count
Impact factor
Immediacy Index
Citation Half-life

5. Citation count
Number of times cited within a give time period
Author
Journal
Does not take into account materials outside of
citation database so differs depending on source

6. Exercise
Web of Science subject search – sort by ‘Times
cited’

7. Impact factor
Measures ‘impact’ of a journal (not an article) within a
given subject
Formula is a ratio:
Number of citations to a journal in a given year
for articles occurring in previous 2 years.
DIVIDED BY
number of scholarly articles published in the
journal during those 2 years
So 2011 JIF = Citations in 2011 to articles published
2009-10 / articles published 2009-10

8. Exercise
Look at Journal Citation Reports for a journal that
you use
Find via Web of Science /Additional Resources

9. Concerns with impact factor
Can’t be used to compare cross disciplinary due to
different rates of publication & citation
2 year time frame not adequate for non-scientific
disciplines (has been adjusted to 3-5 years)
Coverage of some disciplines not sufficient in the
ISI databases
Reviews will cite more – journals may include more
to boost impact factor
Doesn’t measure individual researcher’s impact
Is a measure of ‘impact’ a measure of quality?

10. Immediacy index - definition
What it’s supposed to measure: how quickly
articles in a given journal have an impact on the
discipline
Formula: the average number of times an article in
a journal in a given year was cited in that same year

11. Citation half-life - definition
What it’s supposed to measure: Long-term
relevance of articles in a given journal
Formula: median age of articles cited for a
particular journal in a given year

12. Hirsch (H) index
What it’s supposed to measure: Productivity of an
individual, group or institution
Formula: H value is equal to the number of papers
(n) that have n or more citations
It will vary depending on the index database journal
coverage
Biased against early-career researchers as won’t
have had time to be so productive – but study by
Hirsch suggests it’s a predictor of future quality
output

13. H index - exercise
Scopus Author Identifier
WoS author finder

14. Altmetrics
Uses web stats to provide more detailed assessment
of online activity – beyond citations
Use of open data
Blog/twitter mentions
http://altmetrics.org/manifesto/

15. References & websites
EYSENBACH, G. 2011. Can Tweets Predict Citations?
Metrics of Social Impact Based on Twitter and Correlation
with Traditional Metrics of Scientific Impact. J Med
Internet Res [Online]. Available:
http://www.jmir.org/2011/4/e123/.
VAN RAAN, A. F. J. 2006. Comparison of the Hirsch-index
with standard bibliometric indicators and with peer
judgment for 147 chemistry research groups.
Scientometrics, 67, 491-502.
WILLIAMS, G. 2007. Should we ditch impact factors? BMJ,
334, 568-568.
http://www.cwts.nl/ranking/LeidenRankingWebSite.html
http://www.uea.ac.uk/is/collections/researchsupport/Biblio
http://www.ndlr.ie/myri/index.html

16. Thanks to Elaine Bergman who gave permission
for content to be used from
http://www.slideshare.net/librarian68/bibliometric
s-primer
We welcome feedback on this session - did you
find out what you needed to know?