IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/scient/v91y2012i2d10.1007_s11192-011-0582-8.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Is Google Scholar useful for bibliometrics? A webometric analysis

Author

Listed:
  • Isidro F. Aguillo

    (CSIC)

Abstract

Google Scholar, the academic bibliographic database provided free-of-charge by the search engine giant Google, has been suggested as an alternative or complementary resource to the commercial citation databases like Web of Knowledge (ISI/Thomson) or Scopus (Elsevier). In order to check the usefulness of this database for bibliometric analysis, and especially research evaluation, a novel approach is introduced. Instead of names of authors or institutions, a webometric analysis of academic web domains is performed. The bibliographic records for 225 top level web domains (TLD), 19,240 university and 6,380 research centres institutional web domains have been collected from the Google Scholar database. About 63.8% of the records are hosted in generic domains like .com or .org, confirming that most of the Scholar data come from large commercial or non-profit sources. Considering only institutions with at least one record, one-third of the other items (10.6% from the global) are hosted by the 10,442 universities, while 3,901 research centres amount for an additional 7.9% from the total. The individual analysis show that universities from China, Brazil, Spain, Taiwan or Indonesia are far better ranked than expected. In some cases, large international or national databases, or repositories are responsible for the high numbers found. However, in many others, the local contents, including papers in low impact journals, popular scientific literature, and unpublished reports or teaching supporting materials are clearly overrepresented. Google Scholar lacks the quality control needed for its use as a bibliometric tool; the larger coverage it provides consists in some cases of items not comparable with those provided by other similar databases.

Suggested Citation

  • Isidro F. Aguillo, 2012. "Is Google Scholar useful for bibliometrics? A webometric analysis," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 91(2), pages 343-351, May.
  • Handle: RePEc:spr:scient:v:91:y:2012:i:2:d:10.1007_s11192-011-0582-8
    DOI: 10.1007/s11192-011-0582-8
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11192-011-0582-8
    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/s11192-011-0582-8?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. Judit Bar-Ilan, 2010. "Citations to the “Introduction to informetrics” indexed by WOS, Scopus and Google Scholar," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 82(3), pages 495-506, March.
    2. Susanne Mikki, 2010. "Comparing Google Scholar and ISI Web of Science for Earth Sciences," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 82(2), pages 321-331, February.
    3. Lokman I. Meho & Kiduk Yang, 2007. "Impact of data sources on citation counts and rankings of LIS faculty: Web of science versus scopus and google scholar," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 58(13), pages 2105-2125, November.
    4. Declan Butler, 2011. "Computing giants launch free science metrics," Nature, Nature, vol. 476(7358), pages 18-18, August.
    5. Kayvan Kousha & Mike Thelwall, 2008. "Sources of Google Scholar citations outside the Science Citation Index: A comparison between four science disciplines," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 74(2), pages 273-294, 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. Joost C. F. Winter & Amir A. Zadpoor & Dimitra Dodou, 2014. "The expansion of Google Scholar versus Web of Science: a longitudinal study," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 98(2), pages 1547-1565, February.
    2. Halevi, Gali & Moed, Henk & Bar-Ilan, Judit, 2017. "Suitability of Google Scholar as a source of scientific information and as a source of data for scientific evaluation—Review of the Literature," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 11(3), pages 823-834.
    3. Martín-Martín, Alberto & Orduna-Malea, Enrique & Thelwall, Mike & Delgado López-Cózar, Emilio, 2018. "Google Scholar, Web of Science, and Scopus: A systematic comparison of citations in 252 subject categories," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 12(4), pages 1160-1177.
    4. 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.
    5. Waltman, Ludo, 2016. "A review of the literature on citation impact indicators," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 10(2), pages 365-391.
    6. Alberto Martín-Martín & Enrique Orduna-Malea & Emilio Delgado López-Cózar, 2018. "Coverage of highly-cited documents in Google Scholar, Web of Science, and Scopus: a multidisciplinary comparison," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 116(3), pages 2175-2188, September.
    7. Teja Koler-Povh & Primož Južnič & Goran Turk, 2014. "Impact of open access on citation of scholarly publications in the field of civil engineering," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 98(2), pages 1033-1045, February.
    8. Dejian Yu & Sun Meng, 2018. "An overview of biomass energy research with bibliometric indicators," Energy & Environment, , vol. 29(4), pages 576-590, June.
    9. Sergio Copiello, 2019. "The open access citation premium may depend on the openness and inclusiveness of the indexing database, but the relationship is controversial because it is ambiguous where the open access boundary lie," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 121(2), pages 995-1018, November.
    10. Yong Yi & Wei Qi & Dandan Wu, 2013. "Are CIVETS the next BRICs? A comparative analysis from scientometrics perspective," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 94(2), pages 615-628, February.
    11. Peder Olesen Larsen & Markus Ins, 2010. "The rate of growth in scientific publication and the decline in coverage provided by Science Citation Index," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 84(3), pages 575-603, September.
    12. Judit Bar-Ilan, 2010. "Citations to the “Introduction to informetrics” indexed by WOS, Scopus and Google Scholar," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 82(3), pages 495-506, March.
    13. Antonio Cavacini, 2015. "What is the best database for computer science journal articles?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 102(3), pages 2059-2071, March.
    14. Maor Weinberger & Maayan Zhitomirsky-Geffet, 2021. "Diversity of success: measuring the scholarly performance diversity of tenured professors in the Israeli academia," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(4), pages 2931-2970, April.
    15. Michael Gusenbauer, 2022. "Search where you will find most: Comparing the disciplinary coverage of 56 bibliographic databases," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(5), pages 2683-2745, May.
    16. Bornmann, Lutz & Marx, Werner & Schier, Hermann & Rahm, Erhard & Thor, Andreas & Daniel, Hans-Dieter, 2009. "Convergent validity of bibliometric Google Scholar data in the field of chemistry—Citation counts for papers that were accepted by Angewandte Chemie International Edition or rejected but published els," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 3(1), pages 27-35.
    17. Goio Etxebarria & Mikel Gomez-Uranga, 2010. "Use of Scopus and Google Scholar to measure social sciences production in four major Spanish universities," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 82(2), pages 333-349, February.
    18. Marian R. Chertow & Koichi S. Kanaoka & Jooyoung Park, 2021. "Tracking the diffusion of industrial symbiosis scholarship using bibliometrics: Comparing across Web of Science, Scopus, and Google Scholar," Journal of Industrial Ecology, Yale University, vol. 25(4), pages 913-931, August.
    19. George Emm Halkos & Nickolaos G. Tzeremes, 2011. "Measuring economic journals’ citation efficiency: a data envelopment analysis approach," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 88(3), pages 979-1001, September.
    20. Andersen, Jens Peter & Nielsen, Mathias Wullum, 2018. "Google Scholar and Web of Science: Examining gender differences in citation coverage across five scientific disciplines," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 12(3), pages 950-959.

    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:91:y:2012:i:2:d:10.1007_s11192-011-0582-8. 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.