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Early Mendeley readers correlate with later citation counts

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  • Mike Thelwall

    (University of Wolverhampton)

Abstract

Counts of the number of readers registered in the social reference manager Mendeley have been proposed as an early impact indicator for journal articles. Although previous research has shown that Mendeley reader counts for articles tend to have a strong positive correlation with synchronous citation counts after a few years, no previous studies have compared early Mendeley reader counts with later citation counts. In response, this first diachronic analysis compares reader counts within a month of publication with citation counts after 20 months for ten fields. There are moderate or strong correlations in eight out of ten fields, with the two exceptions being the smallest categories (n = 18, 36) with wide confidence intervals. The correlations are higher than the correlations between later citations and early citations, showing that Mendeley reader counts are more useful early impact indicators than citation counts.

Suggested Citation

  • Mike Thelwall, 2018. "Early Mendeley readers correlate with later citation counts," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 115(3), pages 1231-1240, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:scient:v:115:y:2018:i:3:d:10.1007_s11192-018-2715-9
    DOI: 10.1007/s11192-018-2715-9
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    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Mike Thelwall, 2018. "Does Microsoft Academic find early citations?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 114(1), pages 325-334, January.
    2. Stegehuis, Clara & Litvak, Nelly & Waltman, Ludo, 2015. "Predicting the long-term citation impact of recent publications," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 9(3), pages 642-657.
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    6. Mike Thelwall & Pardeep Sud, 2016. "Mendeley readership counts: An investigation of temporal and disciplinary differences," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 67(12), pages 3036-3050, December.
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    10. Mike Thelwall & Paul Wilson, 2016. "Mendeley readership altmetrics for medical articles: An analysis of 45 fields," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 67(8), pages 1962-1972, August.
    11. Mike Thelwall, 2017. "Are Mendeley reader counts useful impact indicators in all fields?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 113(3), pages 1721-1731, December.
    12. Anne-Wil Harzing & Satu Alakangas, 2017. "Microsoft Academic is one year old: the Phoenix is ready to leave the nest," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 112(3), pages 1887-1894, September.
    13. Stefanie Haustein & Timothy D. Bowman & Kim Holmberg & Andrew Tsou & Cassidy R. Sugimoto & Vincent Larivière, 2016. "Tweets as impact indicators: Examining the implications of automated “bot” accounts on Twitter," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 67(1), pages 232-238, January.
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    18. Ehsan Mohammadi & Mike Thelwall & Kayvan Kousha, 2016. "Can Mendeley bookmarks reflect readership? A survey of user motivations," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 67(5), pages 1198-1209, May.
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    20. David I Stern, 2014. "High-Ranked Social Science Journal Articles Can Be Identified from Early Citation Information," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 9(11), pages 1-11, November.
    21. Derek De Solla Price, 1976. "A general theory of bibliometric and other cumulative advantage processes," Journal of the American Society for Information Science, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 27(5), pages 292-306, September.
    22. Mike Thelwall, 2016. "Interpreting correlations between citation counts and other indicators," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 108(1), pages 337-347, July.
    23. Ehsan Mohammadi & Mike Thelwall & Stefanie Haustein & Vincent Larivière, 2015. "Who reads research articles? An altmetrics analysis of Mendeley user categories," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 66(9), pages 1832-1846, September.
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