IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/jamist/v60y2009i8p1537-1549.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Google book search: Citation analysis for social science and the humanities

Author

Listed:
  • Kayvan Kousha
  • Mike Thelwall

Abstract

In both the social sciences and the humanities, books and monographs play significant roles in research communication. The absence of citations from most books and monographs from the Thomson Reuters/Institute for Scientific Information databases (ISI) has been criticized, but attempts to include citations from or to books in the research evaluation of the social sciences and humanities have not led to widespread adoption. This article assesses whether Google Book Search (GBS) can partially fill this gap by comparing citations from books with citations from journal articles to journal articles in 10 science, social science, and humanities disciplines. Book citations were 31% to 212% of ISI citations and, hence, numerous enough to supplement ISI citations in the social sciences and humanities covered, but not in the sciences (3%–5%), except for computing (46%), due to numerous published conference proceedings. A case study was also made of all 1,923 articles in the 51 information science and library science ISI‐indexed journals published in 2003. Within this set, highly book‐cited articles tended to receive many ISI citations, indicating a significant relationship between the two types of citation data, but with important exceptions that point to the additional information provided by book citations. In summary, GBS is clearly a valuable new source of citation data for the social sciences and humanities. One practical implication is that book‐oriented scholars should consult it for additional citations to their work when applying for promotion and tenure.

Suggested Citation

  • Kayvan Kousha & Mike Thelwall, 2009. "Google book search: Citation analysis for social science and the humanities," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 60(8), pages 1537-1549, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:jamist:v:60:y:2009:i:8:p:1537-1549
    DOI: 10.1002/asi.21085
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.21085
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1002/asi.21085?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
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Guy Madison & Knut Sundell, 2022. "Numbers of publications and citations for researchers in fields pertinent to the social services: a comparison of peer-reviewed journal publications across six disciplines," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(10), pages 6029-6046, October.
    2. Juan Gorraiz & Christian Gumpenberger & Thomas Glade, 2016. "On the bibliometric coordinates of four different research fields in Geography," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 107(2), pages 873-897, May.
    3. Pardeep Sud & Mike Thelwall, 2014. "Evaluating altmetrics," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 98(2), pages 1131-1143, February.
    4. Yongjun Zhu & Erjia Yan & Silvio Peroni & Chao Che, 2020. "Nine million book items and eleven million citations: a study of book-based scholarly communication using OpenCitations," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 122(2), pages 1097-1112, February.
    5. Ronald Snijder, 2016. "Revisiting an open access monograph experiment: measuring citations and tweets 5 years later," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 109(3), pages 1855-1875, December.
    6. Mauro Lizot & Pedro Paulo Andrade Júnior & Flavio Trojan & Carolina Sales Magacho & Shirley Suellen Thesari & Andreia Santos Goffi, 2019. "Analysis of Evaluation Methods of Sustainable Supply Chain Management in Production Engineering Journals with High Impact," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(1), pages 1-20, December.
    7. Thelwall, Mike & Sud, Pardeep, 2014. "No citation advantage for monograph-based collaborations?," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 8(1), pages 276-283.
    8. Björn Hammarfelt, 2014. "Using altmetrics for assessing research impact in the humanities," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 101(2), pages 1419-1430, November.
    9. Mike Thelwall, 2012. "Journal impact evaluation: a webometric perspective," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 92(2), pages 429-441, August.
    10. Daniel Torres-Salinas & Nicolás Robinson-Garcia & Juan Gorraiz, 2017. "Filling the citation gap: measuring the multidimensional impact of the academic book at institutional level with PlumX," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 113(3), pages 1371-1384, December.
    11. Xuemei Li & Mike Thelwall & Dean Giustini, 2012. "Validating online reference managers for scholarly impact measurement," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 91(2), pages 461-471, May.
    12. Ülle Must, 2012. "Alone or together: examples from history research," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 91(2), pages 527-537, May.
    13. Torres-Salinas, Daniel & Rodríguez-Sánchez, Rosa & Robinson-García, Nicolás & Fdez-Valdivia, J. & García, J.A., 2013. "Mapping citation patterns of book chapters in the Book Citation Index," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 7(2), pages 412-424.
    14. Mohammadamin Erfanmanesh & A. Noorhidawati & A. Abrizah, 2019. "What can Bookmetrix tell us about the impact of Springer Nature’s books," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 121(1), pages 521-536, October.
    15. Kousha, Kayvan & Thelwall, Mike, 2018. "Can Microsoft Academic help to assess the citation impact of academic books?," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 12(3), pages 972-984.
    16. Chi, Pei-Shan, 2016. "Differing disciplinary citation concentration patterns of book and journal literature?," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 10(3), pages 814-829.
    17. Ashraf Maleki, 2022. "Why does library holding format really matter for book impact assessment?: Modelling the relationship between citations and altmetrics with print and electronic holdings," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(2), pages 1129-1160, February.
    18. Kousha, Kayvan & Thelwall, Mike & Rezaie, Somayeh, 2010. "Using the Web for research evaluation: The Integrated Online Impact indicator," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 4(1), pages 124-135.
    19. Siluo Yang & Xin Xing & Fan Qi & Maria Cláudia Cabrini Grácio, 2021. "Comparison of academic book impact from a disciplinary perspective: an analysis of citations and altmetric indicators," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(2), pages 1101-1123, February.
    20. Amalia Mas-Bleda & Mike Thelwall & Kayvan Kousha & Isidro F. Aguillo, 2014. "Do highly cited researchers successfully use the social web?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 101(1), pages 337-356, October.
    21. Andrea Giovanni Nuzzolese & Paolo Ciancarini & Aldo Gangemi & Silvio Peroni & Francesco Poggi & Valentina Presutti, 2019. "Do altmetrics work for assessing research quality?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 118(2), pages 539-562, February.
    22. Mingkun Wei & Abdolreza Noroozi Chakoli, 2020. "Evaluating the relationship between the academic and social impact of open access books based on citation behaviors and social media attention," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 125(3), pages 2401-2420, December.
    23. Franc Mali, 2013. "Why an Unbiased External R&D Evaluation System is Important for the Progress of Social Sciences—the Case of a Small Social Science Community," Social Sciences, MDPI, vol. 2(4), pages 1-14, December.
    24. Maja Jokić & Andrea Mervar & Stjepan Mateljan, 2019. "Comparative analysis of book citations in social science journals by Central and Eastern European authors," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 120(3), pages 1005-1029, September.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:bla:jamist:v:60:y:2009:i:8:p:1537-1549. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.asis.org .

    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.