Loading...
Interpreting correlations between citation counts and other indicators
Thelwall, Mike
Thelwall, Mike
Authors
Editors
Other contributors
Affiliation
Epub Date
Issue Date
2016-05-09
Submitted date
Alternative
Abstract
Altmetrics or other indicators for the impact of academic outputs are often correlated with citation counts in order to help assess their value. Nevertheless, there are no guidelines about how to assess the strengths of the correlations found. This is a problem because this value affects the conclusions that should be drawn. In response, this article uses experimental simulations to assess the correlation strengths to be expected under various different conditions. The results show that the correlation strength reflects not only the underlying degree of association but also the average magnitude of the numbers involved. Overall, the results suggest that due to the number of assumptions that must be made in practice it will rarely be possible to make a realistic interpretation of the strength of a correlation coefficient.
Citation
Thelwall, M. (2016) Interpreting correlations between citation counts and other indicators. Scientometrics 108 (1), pp 337–347.
Publisher
Journal
Research Unit
PubMed ID
PubMed Central ID
Embedded videos
Additional Links
Type
Journal article
Language
en
Description
This is an accepted manuscript of an article published by Springer in Scientometrics on 09/05/2016, available online: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-016-1973-7
The accepted version of the publication may differ from the final published version.
Series/Report no.
ISSN
0138-9130