Ranking of library and information science researchers: Comparison of data sources for correlating citation data, and expert judgments

Li, J.A., Sanderson, M., Willett, P., Norris, M. and Oppenheim, C. (2010) Ranking of library and information science researchers: Comparison of data sources for correlating citation data, and expert judgments. Journal of Informetrics , 4 (4). pp. 554-563. ISSN 1751-1577

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Abstract

This paper studies the correlations between peer review and citation indicators when evaluating research quality in library and information science (LIS). Forty-two LIS experts provided judgments on a 5-point scale of the quality of research published by 101 scholars; the median rankings resulting from these judgments were then correlated with h-, g- and H-index values computed using three different sources of citation data: Web of Science (WoS), Scopus and Google Scholar (GS). The two variants of the basic h-index correlated more strongly with peer judgment than did the h-index itself; citation data from Scopus was more strongly correlated with the expert judgments than was data from GS, which in turn was more strongly correlated than data from WoS; correlations from a carefully cleaned version of GS data were little different from those obtained using swiftly gathered GS data; the indices from the citation databases resulted in broadly similar rankings of the LIS academics; GS disadvantaged researchers in bibliometrics compared to the other two citation database while WoS disadvantaged researchers in the more technical aspects of information retrieval; and experts from the UK and other European countries rated UK academics with higher scores than did experts from the USA. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Item Type:	Article
Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information:	© 2010 Elsevier. This is an author produced version of a paper subsequently published in Journal of Informetrics. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy.
Keywords:	Expert judgments; g-index; h-index; H-index; Library and information science; Peer review
Academic Units:	The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Social Sciences (Sheffield) > Information School (Sheffield)
Depositing User:	Miss Anthea Tucker
Date Deposited:	01 Oct 2010 13:14
Last Modified:	08 Feb 2013 17:07
Published Version:	http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.joi.2010.06.005
Status:	Published
Publisher:	Elsevier Science
Refereed:	Yes
Identification Number:	10.1016/j.joi.2010.06.005
URI:	http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/id/eprint/11244

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