Citations and links as measures of effectiveness of online LIS journals
Alastair G. Smith School of Information Management, Victoria
University of Wellington [email protected]
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
0
2000
4000
6000
8000
10000
12000
14000
16000
Sit
ati
on
s
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
0.00
2.00
4.00
6.00
8.00
10.00
12.00
14.00
16.00
WIF
Google Page Rank
5
5.5
6
6.5
7
7.5
8
8.5
Go
og
le P
ag
e R
an
k
1
10
100
1000
10000
100000
Sitations
Citations
Citations and Sitations
0
100
200
300
400
500
600
700
800
900
0.00 5.00 10.00 15.00 20.00
Web Impact Factor
Cit
ati
on
s
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
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
Article Sitation -formal
Article Sitation -other
All ArticleSitations
JournalSitations
Navigation
Perc
en
tag
e o
f S
itati
on
s
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