Kousha, K (Kousha, Kayvan); Thelwall, M (Thelwall, Mike) The Web impact of open access social science research LIBRARY & INFORMATION SCIENCE RESEARCH, 29 (4): 495-507 2007

[Eugene Garfield]

Email Address: E-mail Address: kkoosha at ut.ac.ir; m.thelwall at wlv.ac.uk 

Author(s): Kousha, K (Kousha, Kayvan); Thelwall, M (Thelwall, Mike) 

Title: The Web impact of open access social science research 

Source: LIBRARY & INFORMATION SCIENCE RESEARCH, 29 (4): 495-507 2007 

Language: English 

Document Type: Article 

Keywords Plus: SCHOLARLY COMMUNICATION; HUMANITIES; CITATIONS; ARTICLES; 
MOTIVATIONS; FIELDS 

Abstract: For a long time, Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) 
journal citations have been widely used for research performance 
monitoring of the sciences. For the social sciences, however, the Social 
Sciences Citation Index (R) (SSCI (R)) can sometimes be insufficient. 
Broader types of publications (e.g., books and non-ISI jounals) and 
informal scholarly indicators may also be needed. This article 
investigates whether the Web can help to fill this gap. The authors 
analyzed 1530 citations from Google (TM) to 492 research articles from 44 
open access social science journals. The articles were published in 2001 
in the fields of education, psychology, sociology, and economics. About 
19% of the Web citations represented formal impact equivalent to journal 
citations, and 11% were more informal indicators of impact. The average 
was about 3 formal and 2 informal impact citations per article. Although 
the proportions of formal and informal online impact were similar in 
sociology, psychology, and education, economics showed six times more 
formal impact than informal impact. The results suggest that new types of 
citation information and informal scholarly indictors could be extracted 
from the Web for the social sciences. Since these form only a small 
proportion of the Web citations, however, Web citation counts should first 
be processed to remove irrelevant citations. This can be a time-consuming 
process unless automated. 
(C) 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. 

Addresses: Univ Tehran, Dept Lib & Informat Sci, Tehran 14174, Iran; 
Wolverhampton Univ, Sch Comp & Informat Technol, Wolverhampton WV1 1ST, 
England 

Reprint Address: Kousha, K, Univ Tehran, Dept Lib & Informat Sci, Tehran 
14174, Iran. 

E-mail Address: kkoosha at ut.ac.ir; m.thelwall at wlv.ac.uk 

Times Cited: 0 

Publisher: ELSEVIER SCIENCE INC 

Publisher Address: 360 PARK AVE SOUTH, NEW YORK, NY 10010-1710 USA 

ISSN: 0740-8188 

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