A theory of “megacitation” is introduced and used in an experiment to demonstrate how a qualitative scholarly book review can be converted into a weighted bibliometric indicator. We employ a manual human‐coding approach to classify book reviews in the field of history based on reviewers' assessments of a book author's scholarly credibility (SC) and writing style (WS). In total, 100 book reviews were selected from the American Historical Review and coded for their positive/negative valence on these two dimensions. Most were coded as positive (68% for SC and 47% for WS), and there was also a small positive correlation between SC and WS (r = 0.2). We then constructed a classifier, combining both manual design and machine learning, to categorize sentiment‐based sentences in history book reviews. The machine classifier produced a matched accuracy (matched to the human coding) of approximately 75% for SC and 64% for WS. WS was found to be more difficult to classify by machine than SC because of the reviewers' use of more subtle language. With further training data, a machine‐learning approach could be useful for automatically classifying a large number of history book reviews at once. Weighted megacitations can be especially valuable if they are used in conjunction with regular book/journal citations, and “libcitations” (i.e., library holding counts) for a comprehensive assessment of a book/monograph's scholarly impact.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
customersupport@researchsolutions.com
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.