The gender gap in citations between male and female researchers is well documented. However, the reasons for this gap are less certain and widely contested. Discussing findings from a mixed methods analysis of research publications from Norway, Lin Zha…
Category: citation
Who gets to be a classic in the social sciences?
Of all the ideas produced by researchers in the social sciences, only a relatively small number of key ideas and researchers will become canonised as classics, objects of continued interest and key learning points for new researchers. However, the proc…
Less ‘prestigious’ journals can contain more diverse research, by citing them we can shape a more just politics of citation.
Drawing on their recent analysis of journals in the field of Higher Education Studies, which shows that journals with lower impact rankings are more likely to feature research from diverse geographic and linguistic contexts, Shannon Mason and Margaret …
Google Scholar, Web of Science, and Scopus: Which is best for me?
Being able to find, assess and place new research within a field of knowledge, is integral to any research project. For social scientists this process is increasingly likely to take place on Google Scholar, closely followed by traditional scholarly databases. In this post, Alberto Martín-Martín, Enrique Orduna-Malea , Mike Thelwall, Emilio Delgado-López-Cózar, analyse the relative coverage of the three main research databases, […]
Journal Indexing: Core standards and why they matter
The ways in which journals are indexed online is essential to how they can be searched for and found. Inclusion in certain indexes is also closely linked to quality assessment, with research funders often requiring their grantees to publish in outlets listed in certain indexes. In this post Danielle Padula explains the importance of good journal indexing and how journals […]
The DataCite Meeting in Nancy, France
Last week I took a lovely train ride through the cow-dotted French countryside to attend the 2014 DataCite Annual Conference. The event was held at the Institut de l’information Scientifique et Technique (INIST) in Nancy, France, which is about 1.5 hours by train outside of Paris. INIST is the French DataCite member (more on DataCite later). […]
Access to Citation Data
Back in 2012, Jisc commissioned a study of the costs, benefits and risks associated with collecting and analysing citation data. That study is now nearing completion and will be published very soon. As a precursor to that, on 14 May 2013 I and a group …
Impact Factors: A Broken System
If you are a researcher, you are very familiar with the concept of a journal’s Impact Factor (IF). Basically, it’s a way to grade journal quality. From Wikipedia: The impact factor (IF) of an academic journal is a measure reflecting the average number of citations to recent articles published in the journal. It is frequently used as a proxy for the relative importance […]
The New OSTP Policy & What it Means
Last week, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) responded to calls for broader access to federally funded research. I was curious as to whether this policy had any teeth, so I actually read the official memorandum. Here I summarize and have a few thoughts. The overall theme of the document is best […]