Citations and links as measures of effectiveness of online LIS journals

Alastair G. Smith School of Information Management, Victoria

University of Wellington Alastair.Smith@vuw.ac.nz

Overview Exploratory study Surveyed 10 open access LIS E-

journals Compared Web link “sitations”

with conventional “citations” Examined samples of sitations Implications for LIS E-Journals

The E-Journals Ariadne Cybermetrics D-Lib Magazine First Monday Information Research Journal of Digital Information Journal of Electronic Publishing Journal of Information, Law and Technology LIBRES: Library and Information Science Research

Electronic Journal PACS-R: Public Access Computer Systems Review

Citation Counts Originally carried out in Web of

Knowledge, revised using Dialog version of ISI databases: Science Citation Index 1990- Social Sciences Citation Index 1972- Arts and Humanities Citation Index 1980-

Problems with: Scanning for differing versions of titles (J Dig

Inf; J Digital Informatio…) Identifying target journal (LIBRES vs Libres)

Citations in ISI databases

0100200300400500600700800900

Cita

tions

Sitations on AltaVista Search for external links to an e-journal

site with the URL xxx:link:xxx and not host:xxx Issues:

Excludes internal navigation links, but also links between articles in same journal

AltaVista does not find all pages on Web After March 2004, AltaVista database

changed, so search not reproducible

Sitations in AltaVista

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Sit

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Web Impact Factors Based on Journal Impact Factors Ratio of: Sitations to E-JournalToNumber of Web Pages at Journal Both could be calculated from

AltaVista

Web Impact Factors

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16.00

WIF

Google Page Rank

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8.5

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Sitations

Citations

Citations and Sitations

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Web Impact Factor

Cit

ati

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Correlation?

Sitations and Citations Small correlation between Sitations

and Citations More correlation between WIF and

Citations Sitations and Citations are related,

but different

Nature of Sitations to LIS E-Journals Sampled sitations made to the LIS

E-journalslink:xxx Classified sitations

Sitation classification

1. Link to a formal article in the e-journal

1. From formal publication2. From other type of web page

2. Link to a whole issue of an e-journal 3. Link to the e-journal as a whole 4. Link to non-article material 5. Internal navigation link

Nature of Sitations

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Article Sitation -formal

Article Sitation -other

All ArticleSitations

JournalSitations

Navigation

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tag

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itati

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Observations on Sitations 60% to content, rather than journal as a

whole Journals have different “Sitation Profiles”

D-Lib highly linked from formal publications Others mostly linked from non-formal websites Cybermetrics and LIBRES had fewer links to

content Cybermetrics more linked from non-English sites First Monday more linked from discussion lists

Conclusions about LIS E-Journals LIS E-Journals are now a significant

body of literature Sitations are largely to content Sitations are different from citations Sitations may be more accurate

than citations E-Journals have potential for new

measures of effectiveness

Lessons for publishers Titles and URLs should be distinct

and consistent to make sitation/citation evaluation more effective

Links to journals increase visibility Lists of related journals “live” sitations in articles Have content worth linking to