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Global usage versus global citation metrics: The case of pharmacology journals

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  • Christian Schloegl
  • Juan Gorraiz

Abstract

Following the transition from print journals to electronic (hybrid) journals in the past decade, usage metrics have become an interesting complement to citation metrics. In this article we investigate the similarities of and differences between usage and citation indicators for pharmacy and pharmacology journals and relate the results to a previous study on oncology journals. For the comparison at journal level we use the classical citation indicators as defined in the Journal Citation Reports and compute the corresponding usage indicators. At the article level we not only relate download and citation counts to each other but also try to identify the possible effect of citations upon subsequent downloads. Usage data were provided by ScienceDirect both at the journal level and, for a few selected journals, on a paper‐by‐paper basis. The corresponding citation data were retrieved from the Web of Science and Journal Citation Reports. Our analyses show that electronic journals have become generally accepted over the last decade. While the supply of ScienceDirect pharma journals rose by 50% between 2001 and 2006, the total number of article downloads (full‐text articles [FTAs]) multiplied more than 5‐fold in the same period. This also impacted the pattern of scholarly communication (strong increase in the immediacy index) in the past few years. Our results further reveal a close relation between citation and download frequencies. We computed a high correlation at the journal level when using absolute values and a moderate to high correlation when relating usage and citation impact factors. At the article level the rank correlation between downloads and citations was only medium‐sized. Differences between downloads and citations exist in terms of obsolescence characteristics. While more than half of the articles are downloaded in the publication year or 1 year later, the median cited half‐life was nearly 6 years for our journal sample. Our attempt to reveal a direct influence of citations upon downloads proved not to be feasible.

Suggested Citation

  • Christian Schloegl & Juan Gorraiz, 2011. "Global usage versus global citation metrics: The case of pharmacology journals," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 62(1), pages 161-170, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:jamist:v:62:y:2011:i:1:p:161-170
    DOI: 10.1002/asi.21420
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    Citations

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    Cited by:

    1. Bikun Chen, 2018. "Usage pattern comparison of the same scholarly articles between Web of Science (WoS) and Springer," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 115(1), pages 519-537, April.
    2. Zahed Bigdeli & Morteza Kokabi & Gholam Reza Rajabi & Ali Gazni, 2013. "Patterns of authors’ information scattering: towards a causal explanation of information scattering from a scholarly information-seeking behavior perspective," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 96(1), pages 103-131, July.
    3. Juan Gorraiz & Christian Gumpenberger & Christian Schlögl, 2014. "Usage versus citation behaviours in four subject areas," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 101(2), pages 1077-1095, November.
    4. Khan, Abdullah & Rizvi, Syed Aun R. & Ali, Mohsin & Haroon, Omair, 2021. "A survey of Islamic finance research – Influences and influencers," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 69(C).
    5. Anthony Breitzman, 2021. "The relationship between web usage and citation statistics for electronics and information technology articles," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(3), pages 2085-2105, March.
    6. Yufeng Duan & Zequan Xiong, 2017. "Download patterns of journal papers and their influencing factors," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 112(3), pages 1761-1775, September.
    7. Zhichao Fang & Rodrigo Costas, 2020. "Studying the accumulation velocity of altmetric data tracked by Altmetric.com," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 123(2), pages 1077-1101, May.
    8. Star X. Zhao & Wen Lou & Alice M. Tan & Shuang Yu, 2018. "Do funded papers attract more usage?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 115(1), pages 153-168, April.
    9. Christian Schlögl & Juan Gorraiz & Christian Gumpenberger & Kris Jack & Peter Kraker, 2014. "Comparison of downloads, citations and readership data for two information systems journals," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 101(2), pages 1113-1128, November.
    10. Vicente P. Guerrero-Bote & Félix Moya-Anegón, 2014. "Relationship between downloads and citations at journal and paper levels, and the influence of language," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 101(2), pages 1043-1065, November.
    11. Xianwen Wang & Zhichao Fang & Xiaoling Sun, 2016. "Usage patterns of scholarly articles on Web of Science: a study on Web of Science usage count," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 109(2), pages 917-926, November.

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