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Google Books, Scopus, Microsoft Academic and Mendeley for impact assessment of doctoral dissertations: A multidisciplinary analysis of the UK
Thelwall, Mike
Thelwall, Mike
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2020-06-25
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Abstract
A research doctorate normally culminates in publishing a dissertation reporting a substantial body of novel work. In the absence of a suitable citation index, this article explores the relative merits of alternative methods for the large-scale assessment of dissertation impact, using 150,740 UK doctoral dissertations from 2009-2018. Systematic methods for this were designed for Google Books, Scopus, Microsoft Academic, and Mendeley. Less than 1 in 8 UK doctoral dissertations had at least one Scopus (12%), Microsoft Academic (11%) or Google Books citation (9%), or at least one Mendeley reader (5%). These percentages varied substantially by subject area and publication year. Google Books citations were more common in the Arts and Humanities (18%), whereas Scopus and Microsoft Academic citations were more numerous in Engineering (24%). In the Social Sciences, Google Books (13%) and Scopus (12%) citations were important and in Medical Sciences, Scopus and Microsoft Academic citations to dissertations were rare (6%). Few dissertations had Mendeley readers (from 3% in Science to 8% in the Social Sciences) and further analysis suggests that Google Scholar finds more citations but does not report information about all dissertations within a repository and is not a practical tool for large-scale impact assessment.
Citation
Kousha, K. and Thelwall, M. (2020) Google Books, Scopus, Microsoft Academic and Mendeley for impact assessment of doctoral dissertations: A multidisciplinary analysis of the UK, Quantitative Science Studies, 1(2), pp. 479-504.
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Journal article
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en
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© 2020 The Authors. Published by [Name of Publisher]. This is an open access article available under a Creative Commons licence.
The published version can be accessed at the following link on the publisher’s website: https://doi.org/10.1162/qss_a_00042
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2641-3337
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2641-3337