Webometrics, Informetrics and Bibliometrics – How Useful Are These Indicators for Measuring Knowledge?

Webometrics, Informetrics and Bibliometrics – How useful are these Indicators for Measuring Knowledge?

ESSHRA

June, 12-13, 2007 in Berne

Tunger / Ball, Research Centre Juelich, Germany Herget, HTW Chur, Switzerland Dirk Tunger, Central Library Research Centre Jülich Member of the Helmholtz Association Agenda

1. Introduction 2. Scientific communication 3. Bibliometrics – Scientometrics – Informetrics – Webometrics 4. Summary

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Scholarly Communication and Digital Science

written, digital E-science (21st century)

Explosion of scholarly communication written (end 19th century)

Institutionalisation of scholarly communication (Royal Society, 17th century) written

Beginnings of scholarly communication oral

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De Solla Price, 1963, Little Science – Big Science, p. 9

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NumberAnzahl of ArticlesArtikel in in ISIISI international International

1200000 1000000 800000 600000 400000 200000 0

1 4 3 6 5 8 7 0 58 70 82 94 9 96 9 97 9 98 9 99 1955 1 1 196 1967 1 1 197 1979 1 1 198 1991 1 1 200 2003

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Distribution of all publications [in percentage] (1995-2004) worldwide in Europe

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Definitions

Bibliometrics is a study or measurement of formal aspects of texts, documents, books and information.

Scientometrics analyses the quantitative aspects of the production, dissemination and use of scientific information with the aim of achieving a better understanding of the mechanisms of scientific research as a social activity.

Informetrics is a subdiscipline of information sciences and is defined as the application of mathematical methods to the content of information science.

Webmetrics is the application of informetrical methods to the World Wide Web (WWW).

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Definitions

Mike Thelwall, Liwen Vaughan & Lennart Bjorneborn: Webometrics in: Ann. Rev. Of Information Science & Technology (2006), p. 84 8 of 13 Dirk Tunger, Central Library Research Centre Jülich Member of the Helmholtz Association Traditional Bibliometric indicators

Statistics on Publications and citations by focussing

a range of Publication Years

a special Document Type (review article, research article, Book, …)

a Subject / Topic

an Institution

…

Citation and publication networks 9 of 13 Dirk Tunger, Central Library Research Centre Jülich Member of the Helmholtz Association

Relationship between citation rate and downloads for a physics article over a set period of time

10 of 13 Dirk Tunger, Central Library Research Centre Jülich Member of the Helmholtz Association Summary

- Bibliometrics can give an overview of scientific activity

- The traditional Citation System is still the main tool for bibliometrics

- Bibliometric analyses are used in a standardised way for the STM-Sector

- Webmetrics makes a new quantitative correlations possible

- It will be interesting, what kind of changes of the communication process in science will be measured

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To get in contact: Dirk Tunger Research Centre Juelich 52425 Juelich Germany ++49 2461 616198 [email protected] www.fz-juelich.de/zb/bibliometrics

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