LibbySoucaze_A4

I chose to evaluate two of SILS’ own academics: Zeynep Tufekci and Dr. Gary Marchionini. Both individuals have published numerous works that have collectively been cited thousands of times. Their subject matter is closely aligned however Tufekci has published more work categorized as social science and while Marchionini has more that are categorized as computer science.

Scopus allowed me to evaluate the authors through a wide variety of lenses: citations per year, documents by year, author, country, subject, type, affiliation, per year by source, and funding sponsor. The “metrics overview” in Scopus showed the overall documents by author, the number of citations by the number of documents and the h-index. According to Scopus, Tufekci has 28 documents overall, has 2,646 citations, and an h-index of 17. Marchionini has 123 total documents, 3,489 citations, and an h-index of 29.

Side note: I think it's interesting to see how these graphs reflect milestones in each of these academics' careers. In 2010, Marchionini became the Dean of SILS, and around that time is when his document output started to trend downward, however his citations continued to steadily increase. And Tufekci has gotten a lot of praise for her research and writing of the COVID-19 pandemic, and her graph reflects those as well.

Web of Science seemed to be more stringent about their metrics. Or perhaps it is harder to get work added to the Web of Science. I exported the Citation Report and its metrics for Tufekci and Marchionini were slightly different from the metrics shown in Scopus. Reflecting that Tufekci has only been cited 1,057 times overall and has an h-index of 9; Marchionini cited only 2,455 times with an h-index of 25.

While Web of Science and Scopus reflect slightly different metrics, the metrics from Google Scholar are drastically different. Google Scholar shows that Tufekci has been cited nearly 11,000 times, with an h-index of 35, and Marchionini cited over 17,000 times with an h-index of 54. These numbers seem entirely outlandish. However, considering that they are sourced from Google, rather than a specific database, I’m not entirely shocked. I also found that Google Scholar calculates an i-10 index. This measurement is calculated by counting the number of documents that have been cited at least 10 times. According to Google Scholar, Tufekci has an i-10 index of 77 and Marchionini has an i-10 index of 146. This means that by Google’s calculations, Tufekci has 77 documents that have been cited at least 10 times, and Marchionini has 146 documents. Both of these numbers are greater than the total number of documents by each author reported by Scopus and Web of Science which is interesting.

Below are two simple tables I made comparing the metrics across the three different systems for each author.

Article

I decided to look at two articles that were both published by academics from UNC Chapel Hill and are in the same league in terms of the number of citations according to Scopus (17 and 20). Additionally, the authors of these two articles are both relatively present in the social media sphere, specifically Twitter. The primary difference between these articles are the subject categories they fall under. One falls under the category of social science and the other is more medically relevant in biology.

The measurements from Altmetrics and Scopus were very similar. By Altmetrics measurements, the social science article had 57 readers through Mendeley, 51 tweeters, featured on 1 Facebook page and in 1 blog. Altmetrics also displays how the article has been spread geographically. This one in particular gained some international traction via Twitter in countries such as Finland, Sweden, United Kingdom, Germany, and Canada. Scopus reports the same number of blog features and readers through Mendeley, however it does not have a record of the Facebook page that Altmetrics caught. Another interesting difference is that Scopus counts the number of Tweets (measured 68 total for the social science article) while Altmetrics counts the number of people who tweet or “tweeters.” Additionally, Scopus measures the number of views the article’s abstract had and how many times the article was saved or exported.

I was quite surprised by the results of the biology article, or rather the lack thereof. Scopus reported only one metric, Mendeley Readers (6 total). Altmetrics didn’t have anything about the biology article. I don’t know if it’s a trend that social science articles do better in altmetrics than other sciences, however I suppose I wouldn’t be surprised by that. I did a little more digging and found another biology article by the same author that had been cited over 200 times, and Altmetrics still didn’t show anything.

I have neither given nor received aid while working on this assignment. I completed the assignment before looking at anyone else's work. Signed Libby Soucaze.