Skip to main content
Kent Academic Repository

Normalizing Google Scholar data for use in research evaluation

Mingers, John, Meyer, Martin S. (2017) Normalizing Google Scholar data for use in research evaluation. Scientometrics, 112 (2). pp. 1111-1121. ISSN 0138-9130. E-ISSN 1588-2861. (doi:10.1007/s11192-017-2415-x) (KAR id:61870)

Abstract

Using bibliometric data for the evaluation of the research of institutions and individuals is becoming increasingly common. Bibliometric evaluations across disciplines require that the data be normalized to the field because the fields are very different in their citation processes. Generally, the major bibliographic databases such as Web of Science (WoS) and Scopus are used for this but they have the disadvantage of limited coverage in the social science and humanities. Coverage in Google Scholar (GS) is much better but GS has less reliable data and fewer bibliometric tools. This paper tests a method for GS normalization developed by Bornmann et al. (J Assoc Inf Sci Technol 67:2778–2789, 2016) on an alternative set of data involving journal papers, book chapters and conference papers. The results show that GS normalization is possible although at the moment it requires extensive manual involvement in generating and validating the data. A comparison of the normalized results for journal papers with WoS data shows a high degree of convergent validity.

Item Type: Article
DOI/Identification number: 10.1007/s11192-017-2415-x
Uncontrolled keywords: Google Scholar, Normalization, Research evaluation
Subjects: Z Bibliography. Library Science. Information Resources > Z665 Library Science. Information Science
Divisions: Divisions > Kent Business School - Division > Department of Analytics, Operations and Systems
Depositing User: Martin Meyer
Date Deposited: 27 May 2017 08:44 UTC
Last Modified: 04 Mar 2024 17:56 UTC
Resource URI: https://kar.kent.ac.uk/id/eprint/61870 (The current URI for this page, for reference purposes)

University of Kent Author Information

  • Depositors only (login required):

Total unique views for this document in KAR since July 2020. For more details click on the image.