Google Scholar Metrics for Publications. The software and content features of a new open access bibliometric service
| Date | 03 August 2012 |
| Pages | 604-619 |
| Published date | 03 August 2012 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/14684521211254121 |
| Author | Péter Jacsó |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Library & information science |
SAVVY SEARCHING
Google Scholar Metrics for
Publications
The software and content features of a new
open access bibliometric service
Pe
´ter Jacso
´
Department of Information and Computer Science, University of Hawaii,
Honolulu, Hawaii, USA
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to review the software and content features of the Google
Scholar Metrics (GSM) service launched in April 2012.
Design/methodology/approach – The paper reviews GSM, examining the software, browsing,
searching and sorting functions, citation matching and content.
Findings – The paper reveals that the service can offer a better alternative than the traditional
Google Scholar service to discover and judge the standing of journals through the prism of their
citedness. GSM could become a potentially useful complementary resource primarily by virtue of its
brand recognition, and the convenience of not requiring the installation of additional software, but
currently its bibliometric indicators are often inappropriate for decision making in matters of tenure,
promotion, grants and accreditation.
Originality/value – The paper provides a good understanding of the GSM service.
Keywords Search engines,User studies, Periodicals, Open systems,Public domain software
Paper type Research paper
This paper reviews the software and content features of the Google Scholar Metrics
(GSM) service launched in April 2012. The traditional limitations imposed on the users
by the developers of Google Scholar apply also to this service, but a few hundred test
searches by titles of journals, monographic series and conference proceedings on
marketing-focused and marketing-related business periodicals, indicate that the
service can offer a better alternative than the traditional Google Scholar service to
discover and judge the standing of journals by two bibliometric indicators, a five-year
h-index (h5-index), and the median number of citations that the periodical received for
its papers published between 2007 and 2011. These help gauge the influence of the
periodicals through the prism of their citedness, but – as always – the reported
indicators must be taken with more than a grain of salt. GSM appears to be a
somewhat belated reply to the Journalogy module of the Microsoft Academic Search
engine. GSM does not come close to the transparency of the bibliographic and
bibliometric details, and the exemplary browsing, searching, and output options
offered by the – also open access – SCImago service, not even to the very good
software features of the Publish or Perish (PoP) software which impressively
organizes, structures and sorts the data reported by the traditional Google Scholar
service, and produces a great variety of bibliometric indicators. GSM could become a
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
www.emeraldinsight.com/1468-4527.htm
OIR
36,4
604
Online Information Review
Vol. 36 No. 4, 2012
pp. 604-619
qEmerald Group Publishing Limited
1468-4527
DOI 10.1108/14684521211254121
potentially useful complementary resource primarily by virtue of its brand recognition,
and the convenience of not requiring the installation of additional software, but
currently its bibliometric indicators are often inappropriate for decision making in
matters of tenure, promotion, grants and accreditation which rely heavily on the
prestige of publication venues used by research and teaching faculty. Some of the
systemic errors of GSM are inherited from Google Scholar, while others are of its own
making. The plastic surgery of the interface reflects an improvement, but the parsing
and citation matching components require brain surgery to qualify GSM for
bibliometric purposes at the journal level.
The context
Usually I review the progress and regress of Google Scholar once a year. This year is
an exception simply because Google Scholar developers have introduced two new
services in the past nine months: Google Scholar Author Citation Tracker in 2011
(Jacso
´, 2012a) and Google Scholar Metrics for Publications in April 2012. Given the
wide-scale adulation of any information services which have the word Google in them
it is important to inform librarians and other information professionals about the pros
and cons of every service of Google, Inc. which relates to the domain of library and
information science and technology.
Journals, especially academic journals, are getting more information from more
angles than ever. One reason for this is the fact that subscribing to new journals or
even just renewing existing subscriptions has become more and more difficult. While
the budgets of libraries kept decreasing, the subscription prices of scholarly journals
kept sharply increasing in the past few years (Ka
¨ser, 2011). Cancellation/renewal and
new subscription decisions demand factual data about the use and importance of the
expensive journals. The volume and relative level of citedness of competing journals
can be the decisive factor in collection management.
The other reason for the increased bibliometric interest in journals is the fact that
the assessments of research prod uctivity and influence of facult y members,
departments, colleges and entire universities for promotion, tenure, grants and
accreditation are increasingly based on the reputation of the publishing venues
(journals and conference proceedi ngs) of teaching and research faculty (often at the
expense of the impact of the specific papers authored by the individual educators and
researchers at various aggregation levels).
The citation-based ranking and rating of researchers and serials has become very
common (Bauerly and Johnson, 2005; Baumgartner and Pieters, 2003; Helm et al., 2003;
Hult et al., 1997, 2008; Moussa and Touzani, 2010; Pecotich and Everett, 1989; Saad,
2006; Soutar and Murphy, 2009; Steward and Lewis, 2012). The h-index (Hirsch, 2005)
of individuals and research groups as well as of journals and conference proceedings
(Alonso et al., 2009; Braun et al., 2006; Cronin and Meho, 2006; Guidry et al., 2004;
Harzing and van der Wal, 2009; Garcia-Perez, 2009) has become a widely accepted –
and simple to understand – indicator.
Quite tellingly more than three dozen variants of this indicator have been proposed,
although many of them did not cause remarkable differences in the h-index values
(Bornmann et al., 2011; Bornmann, 2011). The variety of databases and their licensed
configurations which can be used for citation analysis opens an additional dimension
to research assessment based on the h-index (Bar-Ilan, 2008; Jacso
´, 2004, 2007, 2008a, b,
GSM for
Publications
605
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