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M endeley readership counts: An investigation of temporal and disciplinary differences
Author(s) -
Thelwall Mike,
Sud Pardeep
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
journal of the association for information science and technology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.903
H-Index - 145
eISSN - 2330-1643
pISSN - 2330-1635
DOI - 10.1002/asi.23559
Subject(s) - audience measurement , citation , discipline , value (mathematics) , altmetrics , reading (process) , citation analysis , bibliometrics , psychology , social science , library science , advertising , statistics , sociology , computer science , political science , mathematics , business , law
Scientists and managers using citation‐based indicators to help evaluate research cannot evaluate recent articles because of the time needed for citations to accrue. Reading occurs before citing, however, and so it makes sense to count readers rather than citations for recent publications. To assess this, M endeley readers and citations were obtained for articles from 2004 to late 2014 in five broad categories (agriculture, business, decision science, pharmacy, and the social sciences) and 50 subcategories. In these areas, citation counts tended to increase with every extra year since publication, and readership counts tended to increase faster initially but then stabilize after about 5 years. The correlation between citations and readers was also higher for longer time periods, stabilizing after about 5 years. Although there were substantial differences between broad fields and smaller differences between subfields, the results confirm the value of M endeley reader counts as early scientific impact indicators.