[Asis-l] Shortcomings at Google Scholar Metrics

[Alvaro Cabezas]

Dear colleagues

Following the discussion about the new Google's product Google Scholar
Metrics (GSM), I would like to present you a recent analysis we have
conducted and where we have found several pitfalls and shortcomings. Some
of them are the mixture or journals and repositories (along other sources),
the low coverage of national journals in Social Sciences and Humanities (as
only journals publishing more than 100 papers in the 5 years timeframe are
included), the lack of standardization in journals’ titles, the lack of
care regarding the formal presentation of the product or the unprecedented
ability to browse only by languages, which is not helpful for evaluation
purposes. Thus, it is concluded that despite Google Scholar’s value as a
source for scientific assessment, GSM is an immature product with many
shortcomings, and therefore its use is not advisable for evaluation
purposes.

Full details and supplementary material can be found at:

Delgado-López-Cózar, Emilio; Cabezas-Clavijo, Álvaro. “Google Scholar
Metrics: an unreliable tool for assessing scientific journals”. El
profesional de la información, 2012, July-August, v. 21, n. 4, pp. 419-427.
http://dx.doi.org/10.3145/epi.2012.jul.15 (open access version at
http://digibug.ugr.es/handle/10481/21540 ; supplementary material at
http://ec3.ugr.es/googlescholar.htm )


Best regards

-- 
Álvaro Cabezas
-------------------------------------
EC3. Grupo Inv. Evaluación de la Ciencia
y de la Comunicación Científica.
Universidad de Granada
Tlf:958 243939
http://ec3.ugr.es

-------------------------------------
http://alvarocabezas.com
http://twitter.com/acabezas/
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