IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/scient/v102y2015i2d10.1007_s11192-014-1348-x.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Online supplemental information: a sizeable black hole for citations

Author

Listed:
  • Miguel A. García-Pérez

    (Universidad Complutense)

Abstract

Journals are increasingly making use of online supplemental information (OSI) as a means to convey part of the material previously included in the papers themselves. Quite often, material displaced to OSI is accompanied by references that, with rare exceptions, are not incorporated into citation databases. An analysis of OSI in a random sample of papers published in 2013 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA revealed that unique references only listed in OSI amount to more than 10 % of the number of references included in the papers themselves. Obliteration of these references in citation databases contributes to substantial inaccuracies in citation counts, with a bias against papers that are cited only in the methods sections usually displaced to OSI.

Suggested Citation

  • Miguel A. García-Pérez, 2015. "Online supplemental information: a sizeable black hole for citations," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 102(2), pages 1655-1659, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:scient:v:102:y:2015:i:2:d:10.1007_s11192-014-1348-x
    DOI: 10.1007/s11192-014-1348-x
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11192-014-1348-x
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11192-014-1348-x?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. John Panaretos & Chrisovaladis Malesios, 2009. "Assessing scientific research performance and impact with single indices," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 81(3), pages 635-670, December.
    2. Petr Heneberg, 2013. "Lifting the fog of scientometric research artifacts: On the scientometric analysis of environmental tobacco smoke research," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 64(2), pages 334-344, February.
    3. Anne-Wil Harzing, 2013. "A preliminary test of Google Scholar as a source for citation data: a longitudinal study of Nobel prize winners," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 94(3), pages 1057-1075, March.
    4. Isidro F. Aguillo, 2012. "Is Google Scholar useful for bibliometrics? A webometric analysis," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 91(2), pages 343-351, May.
    5. Monika Henzinger & Jacob Suñol & Ingmar Weber, 2010. "The stability of the h-index," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 84(2), pages 465-479, August.
    6. Andrea Diem & Stefan C. Wolter, 2011. "The Use of Bibliometrics to Measure Research Performance in Education Sciences," Economics of Education Working Paper Series 0066, University of Zurich, Department of Business Administration (IBW), revised May 2013.
    7. Petr Heneberg, 2013. "Lifting the fog of scientometric research artifacts: On the scientometric analysis of environmental tobacco smoke research," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 64(2), pages 334-344, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Deming Lin & Tianhui Gong & Wenbin Liu & Martin Meyer, 2020. "An entropy-based measure for the evolution of h index research," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 125(3), pages 2283-2298, December.
    2. Chris Fields, 2015. "Close to the edge: co-authorship proximity of Nobel laureates in Physiology or Medicine, 1991–2010, to cross-disciplinary brokers," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 103(1), pages 267-299, April.
    3. Martin-Martin, Alberto & Orduna-Malea, Enrique & Harzing, Anne-Wil & Delgado López-Cózar, Emilio, 2017. "Can we use Google Scholar to identify highly-cited documents?," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 11(1), pages 152-163.
    4. Enrique Orduña-Malea & Emilio Delgado López-Cózar, 2014. "Google Scholar Metrics evolution: an analysis according to languages," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 98(3), pages 2353-2367, March.
    5. Cristòfol Rovira & Lluís Codina & Frederic Guerrero-Solé & Carlos Lopezosa, 2019. "Ranking by Relevance and Citation Counts, a Comparative Study: Google Scholar, Microsoft Academic, WoS and Scopus," Future Internet, MDPI, vol. 11(9), pages 1-21, September.
    6. Cristòfol Rovira & Lluís Codina & Carlos Lopezosa, 2021. "Language Bias in the Google Scholar Ranking Algorithm," Future Internet, MDPI, vol. 13(2), pages 1-17, January.
    7. Waltman, Ludo, 2016. "A review of the literature on citation impact indicators," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 10(2), pages 365-391.
    8. Qurat-ul Ain & Hira Riaz & Muhammad Tanvir Afzal, 2019. "Evaluation of h-index and its citation intensity based variants in the field of mathematics," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 119(1), pages 187-211, April.
    9. Liu, Weishu, 2021. "Caveats for the use of Web of Science Core Collection in old literature retrieval and historical bibliometric analysis," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 172(C).
    10. Enrique Orduna-Malea & Selenay Aytac & Clara Y. Tran, 2019. "Universities through the eyes of bibliographic databases: a retroactive growth comparison of Google Scholar, Scopus and Web of Science," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 121(1), pages 433-450, October.
    11. Wu, Jiang & Ou, Guiyan & Liu, Xiaohui & Dong, Ke, 2022. "How does academic education background affect top researchers’ performance? Evidence from the field of artificial intelligence," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 16(2).
    12. Bornmann, Lutz & Mutz, Rüdiger & Daniel, Hans-Dieter, 2010. "The h index research output measurement: Two approaches to enhance its accuracy," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 4(3), pages 407-414.
    13. Olga Pilipczuk, 2022. "Building the Cognitive Enterprise in the Energy Sector," Energies, MDPI, vol. 15(24), pages 1-13, December.
    14. Bayissa Badada Badassa & Baiqing Sun & Lixin Qiao, 2020. "Sustainable Transport Infrastructure and Economic Returns: A Bibliometric and Visualization Analysis," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(5), pages 1-24, March.
    15. Zhenbin Yan & Qiang Wu & Xingchen Li, 2016. "Do Hirsch-type indices behave the same in assessing single publications? An empirical study of 29 bibliometric indicators," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 109(3), pages 1815-1833, December.
    16. Wróbel, Krzysztof, 2021. "Searching for the origins of the myth: 80% human error impact on maritime safety," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 216(C).
    17. Alison M. J. Buchan & Eva Jurczyk & Ruth Isserlin & Gary D. Bader, 2016. "Global neuroscience and mental health research: a bibliometrics case study," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 109(1), pages 515-531, October.
    18. José Álvarez-García & Amador Durán-Sánchez & María de la Cruz del Río-Rama & Ronny Correa-Quezada, 2019. "Older Adults and Digital Society: Scientific Coverage," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 16(11), pages 1-16, June.
    19. Christoph Bartneck & Servaas Kokkelmans, 2011. "Detecting h-index manipulation through self-citation analysis," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 87(1), pages 85-98, April.
    20. Nianhang Xu & Winnie P. H. Poon & Kam C. Chan, 2014. "Contributing Institutions and Authors in International Business Research: A Quality-Based Assessment," Management International Review, Springer, vol. 54(5), pages 735-755, October.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:scient:v:102:y:2015:i:2:d:10.1007_s11192-014-1348-x. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.