Are Mendeley reader counts useful impact indicators in all fields?

Abstract

Reader counts from the social reference sharing site Mendeley are known to be valuable for early research evaluation. They have strong correlations with citation counts for journal articles but appear about a year before them. There are disciplinary differences in the value of Mendeley reader counts but systematic evidence is needed at the level of narrow fields to reveal its extent. In response, this article compares Mendeley reader counts with Scopus citation counts for journal articles from 2012 in 325 narrow Scopus fields. Despite strong positive correlations in most fields, averaging 0.671, the correlations in some fields are as weak as 0.255. Technical reasons explain most weaker correlations, suggesting that the underlying relationship is almost always strong. The exceptions are caused by unusually high educational or professional use or topics of interest within countries that avoid Mendeley. The findings suggest that if care is taken then Mendeley reader counts can be used for early citation impact evidence in almost all fields and for related impact in some of the remainder. As an additional application of the results, cross-checking with Mendeley data can be used to identify indexing anomalies in citation databases.

Could scientists use Altmetric.com scores to predict longer term citation counts?

“…The factor analyses confirm prior studies that have found Mendeley to be the altmetric with the strongest association with citation counts (e.g., Haustein, Larivière, Thelwall, Amyot, & Peters, 2014;Thelwall, Haustein, Larivière, & Sugimoto, 2013) and to have a strong correlation with citation counts in almost all fields (Thelwall, 2017). They extend prior knowledge (Zahedi, Costas, & Wouters, 2014) by showing that a range of other altmetrics (Twitter, Google+, Facebook, Blogs, News) tend to at least partly reflect one or more different dimensions of interest and that the results hold for narrow fields and when only comparable scores are included in the factor analysis.…”

Testing for universality of Mendeley readership distributions

“…These two considerationsthe tradeoff between timeliness and robustness of impact evaluation, and the ability to observe impact even outside the scholarly communitybring about the evident interest of scientometricians in the so-called "altmetrics" (Fenner, 2014;Sugimoto, Work, Larivière, & Haustein, 2017;Thelwall, 2017a;Thelwall, 2017b). Known mainly for their ease of use and the wide range of indicators, many scholars are persuaded that altmetrics offer an alternative view of impact, compared to traditional bibliometric indicators.…”

Do females create higher impact research? Scopus citations and Mendeley readers for articles from five countries

“…Most people register articles in Mendeley because they have read them or intend to read them (Mohammadi, Thelwall, & Kousha, 2016) so it gives information about readership. There are high long-term correlations between Mendeley readership counts and citation counts in almost all fields (Thelwall, 2017b) and most readers are students, researchers or lecturers (Mohammadi, Thelwall, Haustein, & Larivière, 2015) and so Mendeley readership counts predominantly reflect citation-like interest. There is an element of national self-interest in Mendeley readership, with article readers disproportionately originating from the same countries as the article authors (Thelwall & Maflahi, 2015).…”