Paper by Mike Thelwall in JASIST Jan. 15, 2004 about the online i mpact of highly rated scholars

[Garfield, Eugene]

e-mail: m.thelwall at wlv.ac.uk <mailto:m.thelwall at wlv.ac.uk>  or
g.harries at wlv.ac.uk <mailto:g.harries at wlv.ac.uk>

  _____

Do the Web sites of higher rated scholars have significantly more online
impact?
Thelwall M, Harries G
JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR INFORMATION SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
55 (2): 149-159 JAN 15 2004

Document type: Review           Language: English
<http://wos9.isiknowledge.com/CIW.cgi?PR=1/1&chem_source=Abstract&SID=QA2Zhs
cEmkQAAFWQoRE&Func=DispCitedRef&UT=000187351000005&PW=&doc=1/1> Cited
References: 101         Times Cited: 0          Find Related Records
Explanation
<http://wos9.isiknowledge.com/LinkOut.cgi?dest=help/h_summrr.html%23results_
rr&origin=>

Abstract:
The quality and impact of academic Web sites is of interest to many
audiences, including the scholars who use them and Web educators who need to
identify best practice. Several large-scale European Union research projects
have been funded to build new indicators for online scientific activity,
reflecting recognition of the importance of the Web for scholarly
communication. In this paper we address the key question of whether higher
rated scholars produce higher impact Web sites, using the United Kingdom as
a case study and measuring scholars' quality in terms of university-wide
average research ratings. Methodological issues concerning the measurement
of the online impact are discussed, leading to the adoption of counts of
links to a university's constituent single domain Web sites from an
aggregated counting metric. The findings suggest that universities with
higher rated scholars produce significantly more Web content but with a
similar average online impact. Higher rated scholars therefore attract more
total links from their peers, but only by being more prolific, refuting
earlier suggestions. It can be surmised that general Web publications are
very different from scholarly journal articles and conference papers, for
which scholarly quality does associate with citation impact. This has
important implications for the construction of new Web indicators, for
example that online impact should not be used to assess the quality of small
groups of scholars, even within a single discipline.


KeyWords Plus:
WORLD-WIDE-WEB, CITATION ANALYSIS, BIBLIOMETRIC METHODS, SEARCH ENGINE,
SCIENCE, UNIVERSITY, LINKS, INFORMATION, DEPARTMENTS, COMMUNICATION


Addresses:
Thelwall M, Wolverhampton Univ, Sch Comp & Informat Technol, Wulfruna St,
Wolverhampton WV1 1SB, England
Wolverhampton Univ, Sch Comp & Informat Technol, Wolverhampton WV1 1SB,
England


Publisher:


When responding, please attach my original message
__________________________________________________
Eugene Garfield, PhD. email:  garfield at codex.cis.upenn.edu
home page: www.eugenegarfield.org
Tel: 215-243-2205 Fax 215-387-1266
President, The Scientist LLC. www.the-scientist.com
3535 Market St., Phila. PA 19104-3389
Chairman Emeritus, ISI www.isinet.com
3501 Market Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104-3302
Past President, American Society for Information Science and Technology
(ASIS&T) www.asis.org







________________________________________________________________________
This email has been scanned for all viruses by the MessageLabs Email
Security System. For more information on a proactive email security
service working around the clock, around the globe, visit
http://www.messagelabs.com
________________________________________________________________________
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.asis.org/pipermail/sigmetrics/attachments/20040120/ee6966c6/attachment.html>