Bibliometric properties of article readership information

From: Stevan Harnad <harnad_at_ecs.soton.ac.uk>
Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2005 18:16:40 +0000

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2005 12:09:01 -0500
From: Eugene Garfield <garfield_at_CODEX.CIS.UPENN.EDU>
To: SIGMETRICS_at_LISTSERV.UTK.EDU

M.J. KURTZ : E-mail Addresses: kurtz_at_cfa.harvard.edu
Title : The bibliometric properties of article readership information

Author(s): Kurtz MJ, Eichhorn G, Accomazzi A, Grant C, Demleitner M,
           Murray SS, Martimbeau N, Elwell B

Source : JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR INFORMATION SCIENCE
           AND TECHNOLOGY 56 (2): 111-128 JAN 15 2005

Document Type: Article


Abstract:
  Digital libraries such as the NASA Astrophysics Data System (Kurtz et
   al., 2005) permit the easy accumulation of a new type of bibliometric
   measure, the number of electronic accesses ("reads") of individual
   articles. We explore various aspects of this new measure. We examine
   the obsolescence function as measured by actual reads and show that it
   can be well fit by the sum of four exponentials with very different
   time constants. We compare the obsolescence function as measured by
   readership with the obsolescence function as measured by citations. We
   find that the citation function is proportional to the sum of two of
   the components of the readership function. This proves that the
   normative theory of citation is true in the mean. We further examine in
   detail the similarities and differences among the citation rate, the
   readership rate, and the total citations for individual articles, and
   discuss some of the causes. Using the number of reads as a bibliometric
   measure for individuals, we introduce the read-cite diagram to provide
   a two-dimensional view of an individual's scientific productivity. We
   develop a simple model to account for an individual's reads and cites
   and use it to show that the position of a person in the read-cite
   diagram is a function of age, innate productivity, and work history. We
   show the age biases of both reads and cites and develop two new
   bibliometric measures which have substantially less age bias than
   citations: SumProd, a weighted sum of total citations and the
   readership rate, intended to show the total productivity of an
   individual; and Read10, the readership rate for articles published in
   the last 10 years, intended to show an individual's current
   productivity. We also discuss the effect of normalization (dividing by
   the number of authors on a paper) on these statistics. We apply SumProd
   and Read10 using new, nonparametric techniques to compare the quality
   of different astronomical research organizations.

Addresses: Kurtz MJ (reprint author), Harvard Smithsonian Ctr Astrophys, 60
Garden St, Cambridge, MA 02138 USA
Harvard Smithsonian Ctr Astrophys, Cambridge, MA 02138 USA

Publisher: JOHN WILEY & SONS INC, 111 RIVER ST, HOBOKEN, NJ 07030 USA
Subject Category: COMPUTER SCIENCE, INFORMATION SYSTEMS; INFORMATION SCIENCE
& LIBRARY SCIENCE

IDS Number: 890JU

ISSN: 1532-2882

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Received on Mon Feb 21 2005 - 18:16:40 GMT