Google Scholar journal metrics: Comparison with impact factor and SCImago journal rank indicator for nuclear medicine journals

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 Nuclear Medicine Research Center, Mashhad University of Medical Sciences, Mashhad, Iran

2 Department of Biostatistics, School of Medicine, Shiraz University of Medical Sciences, Shiraz, Iran

Abstract

Introduction: In the current study, we compared h5-index provided by Google Scholar (GS), impact factor (IF) provided by web of sciences (WOS), and SCImago journal rank indicator (SJR) provided by SCOPUS for quality assessment of nuclear medicine journals.
Methods: 2013 h5-index, 2012 IF, and 2011 SJR of nuclear medicine journals were extracted from their publishers namely GS, WOS, and SCOPUS. Rank of each journal according to each index was provided. Spearman correlation was used for evaluation of the correlation between metrics.
Results: Overall 22 journals were identified. Spearman correlation coefficients between h5-index and other journal metrics were 0.907 for 2012 IF, 0.979 for 2011 JCR, and 0.978 for 2011 SCOPUS h-index (all p-values<0.00001). Wilcoxon signed ranks test showed no statistically meaningful difference between rankings according to h5-index and other journal metrics (p values of 0.589, 0.565, and 0.542 for 2012 IF, 2011 SJR, and 2011 SCOPUS h-index respectively).

Conclusion: The new GS journal metrics are reliable tools for quality assessment of the nuclear medicine journals. In our opinion, h5-index, IF, and SJR should be used in a combination as their combination would give a more holistic view of journal quality. Development of new journal metrics in addition to SJR and IF by GS should be welcomed by the scientific community.

Keywords

Main Subjects

References

Gehanno JF, Rollin L, Darmoni S. Is the coverage of Google Scholar enough to be used alone for systematic reviews. BMC Med Inform Decis Mak. 2013 Jan 9;13:7.
de Winter JCF, Zadpoor AA, Dodou D. The expansion of Google Scholar versus Web of Science: a longitudinal study. Scientometrics. 2014;98(2):1547-1565.
Jacso P. Comparison and analysis of the citedness scores in web of science and google scholar.  In: Fox EA, Neuhold EJ, Premsmit P, Wuwongse V. Digital libraries: Implementing strategies and sharing experiences. Berlin Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag; 2005. p. 360-9.
Jacso P. Testing the calculation of a realistic h-index in google scholar, scopus, and web of science for F W Lancaster. Libr Trends. 2008;56(4):784-815.
Jacso P. Calculating the h-index and other bibliometric and scientometric indicators from Google Scholar with the Publish or Perish software. Online Inform Rev. 2009;33(6):1189-1200.
Harzing AW, Wal RVD. A google scholar h-index for journals: An alternative metric to measure journal impact in economics and business. J Am Soc Inform Sci Technol. 2009;60(1):41-6.
Zarifmahmoudi L, Sadeghi R. Comparison of ISI web of knowledge, SCOPUS, and Google Scholar h-indices of Iranian nuclear medicine scientists. Iran J Nucl Med. 2012;20(1):1-4.
Hamidreza K, Javad A, Ramin S, Leili Z. H-indices of Academic Pediatricians of Mashhad University of Medical Sciences. Acta Inform Med. 2013 Dec;21(4):234-6.
Ramin S, Sarraf Shirazi A. Comparison between Impact factor, SCImago journal rank indicator and Eigenfactor score of nuclear medicine journals. Nucl Med Rev Cent East Eur. 2012 Aug 27;15(2):132-6.
http://scholar.google.com/intl/en/scholar/metrics.html#metrics. Last accessed on July 2013.
Tristán PM. Impact of the Peruvian medical journals by Google Scholar Metrics. Rev. Cuerpo Méd. HNAAA 2012;5(4):6-7.
Jacso P. Google Scholar Metrics for Publications: The software and content features of a new open access bibliometric service. Online Inform Rev. 2012;36(4):604-19.
Delgado-López-Cózar E, Cabezas-Clavijo Á. Google scholar metrics: An unreliable tool for assessing scientific journals. El profesional de la información. 2012;21(4):419-27.
Delgado-López-Cózar E, Cabezas-Clavijo Á. Ranking journals: Could Google Scholar Metrics be an alternative to Journal Citation Reports and Scimago Journal Rank?  Learn Publ 2013;26(2):101-14.
Delgado-López-Cózar E, Robinson-García N. Repositories in Google Scholar Metrics or what is this document type doing in a place as such? Cybermetrics. 2012;16(1): paper 4.
Cabezas-Clavijo Á, Delgado-López-Cózar E. Scholar Metrics: the impact of journals according to Google, just an amusement or a valid scientific tool? E-LIS. E-prints in Libr Inform Sci. 2012.
Delgado López-Cózar E, Cabezas-Clavijo Á. Google Scholar Metrics updated: Now it begins to get serious. EC3 Working Papers . 2012.
Cabezas-Clavijo A, Delgado-López-Cózar E. Google Scholar and the h-index in biomedicine: the popularization of bibliometric assessment. Med Intensiva. 2013 Jun-Jul;37(5):343-54.
http://science.thomsonreuters.com/cgi-bin/jrnlst/jlresults.cgi?PC=D&SC=VY. Last accessed on July 2013.
http://www.scimagojr.com/journalrank.php?area=0&category=2741&country=all&year=2011&order=sjr&min=0&min_type=cd. Last accessed on July 2013.
http://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=top_venues&hl=en&vq=med_nuclearmedicineradiotherapymolecularimaging. Last accessed on July 2013.
Zarifmahmoudi L, Sadeghi R. Citation analysis of Iranian journal of nuclear medicine: Comparison of SCOPUS and Google Scholar. Iran J Nucl Med. 2012;20(2):1-7.
Miri SM, Raoofi A, Heidari Z. Citation Analysis of Hepatitis Monthly by Journal Citation Report (ISI), Google Scholar, and Scopus. Hepat Mon. 2012 Sep;12(9):e7441.
Roales-Nieto JG, O'Neill B. A comparative study of journals quality based on web of science, scopus and google scholar: A case study with IJP&PT. Int J Psychol Psychol Ther 2012;12(3):453-79.
Zarifmahmoudi L, Kianifar HR, Sadeghi R. Citation Analysis of Iranian Journal of Basic Medical Sciences in ISI Web of Knowledge, Scopus, and Google Scholar. Iran J Basic Med Sci. 2013 Oct;16(10):1027-30.
http://scholar.google.com/intl/en/scholar/metrics.html#coverage. Last accessed on January 2014.
http://scholar.google.com/intl/en/scholar/metrics.html#inclusion. Last accessed on January 2014.
Harzing  AW. (2007) Publish or Perish, available from http://www.harzing.com/pop.htm.
Iranian Journal of Nuclear Medicine
Volume 23, Issue 1 - Serial Number 43
Serial number: 43
January 2015
Pages 8-14

Files

Share

How to cite

Statistics