Bibliometrics is an important part of the LIS field and the Information
Literacy toolbox (Larivière, 2012).
Bibliometric data is compiled using a citation index and the
two leading ones are Thompson Reuters’ Web of Science or Elsevier’s Scopus (see
e.g., WoS found at http://thomsonreuters.com /products_services/science/science_products/a-z/journal_citation_reports/)
. These two services look at citations
of scholarly scientific articles and determine their “impact” by the number of
times each is cited, where it is cited, and so forth. Scholarly journals are also tracked this way
(DeBellis, 2009; Larivière, 2012).
While bibliometrics is a general term, there are other
related metrics such as scientometrics.
“Scientometrics is the measurement of science communication, and
bibliometrics deals with more general information processes”
(Patra, Bhattacharya, & Verma, 2006).
While it all sounds confusing, bibliometrics and
scientometrics are widely used in the LIS field today.
Citation analysis helps researchers understand what are the
best journals and resources from which to get their information. I thinks its important today with the
proliferation of open source journals and electronic publishing.
As an analogy, I wouldn't know anything about buying a good
car. They all look the same. Four tires, an engine, doors, etc. However, there is a whole industry dedicated
to telling us which are the best and safest cars.
The same with citation analysis. Which journals are the best? Which academic discoveries (big or small) are
firmly rooted in good science? This is
all done through citation analysis.
It's also a good tool for self-evaluation. Many times a journal will make an editorial
decision based on an article's "impact factor". This keeps out research that is done just to
get published which is often the case when dealing with institutions that
survive on grant money.
Now, as the literature suggests (Larivière, 2012), citation
analysis and bibliometrics is not as accurate in the social sciences and
humanities field because the nature of scholarship is different. SSH disseminates its knowledge differently
than the natural sciences but it can still be a useful tool (Patra,
Bhattacharya, & Verma, 2006).
In the end, we should not think of citation analysis as
"cheating" but an important part of Information Literacy. How do we know the different between what is
returned from an academic library search and a Google Scholar search, which
doesn't do as well with citation analysis?
Tools like bibliometrics, scientometrics and citation analysis.
References
De Bellis, N. (2009). Bibliometrics and Citation Analysis :
From the Science Citation Index to Cybermetrics. Scarecrow Press.
Larivière, V. (2012). The Decade of Metrics? Examining the
Evolution of Metrics Within and Outside LIS. Bulletin Of The American Society
For Information Science & Technology, 38(6), 12-17.
Patra, S., Bhattacharya, P., & Verma, N. (2006).
Bibliometric Study of Literature on Bibliometrics. DESIDOC Bulletin Of
Information Technology, 26(1), 27-32.
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