Citations and links as measures of effectiveness of online LIS journals Alastair G. Smith School of Information Management, Victoria University of Wellington

Overview Exploratory study Surveyed 10 open access LIS E-journals Compared Web link “sitations” with conventional “citations” Examined samples of sitations Implications for LIS E-Journals

The E-Journals Ariadne Cybermetrics D-Lib Magazine First Monday Information Research Journal of Digital Information Journal of Electronic Publishing Journal of Information, Law and Technology LIBRES: Library and Information Science Research Electronic Journal PACS-R: Public Access Computer Systems Review

Citation Counts Originally carried out in Web of Knowledge, revised using Dialog version of ISI databases: Science Citation Index Social Sciences Citation Index Arts and Humanities Citation Index Problems with: Scanning for differing versions of titles (J Dig Inf; J Digital Informatio…) Identifying target journal (LIBRES vs Libres)

Citations in ISI databases

Sitations on AltaVista Search for external links to an e-journal site with the URL xxx: link:xxx and not host:xxx Issues: Excludes internal navigation links, but also links between articles in same journal AltaVista does not find all pages on Web After March 2004, AltaVista database changed, so search not reproducible

Sitations in AltaVista

Web Impact Factors Based on Journal Impact Factors Ratio of: Sitations to E-Journal To Number of Web Pages at Journal Both could be calculated from AltaVista

Web Impact Factors

Google Page Rank

Citations and Sitations

Correlation?

Sitations and Citations Small correlation between Sitations and Citations More correlation between WIF and Citations Sitations and Citations are related, but different

Nature of Sitations to LIS E- Journals Sampled sitations made to the LIS E- journals link:xxx Classified sitations

Sitation classification 1. Link to a formal article in the e-journal 1. From formal publication 2. From other type of web page 2. Link to a whole issue of an e-journal 3. Link to the e-journal as a whole 4. Link to non-article material 5. Internal navigation link

Nature of Sitations

Observations on Sitations 60% to content, rather than journal as a whole Journals have different “Sitation Profiles” D-Lib highly linked from formal publications Others mostly linked from non-formal websites Cybermetrics and LIBRES had fewer links to content Cybermetrics more linked from non-English sites First Monday more linked from discussion lists

Conclusions about LIS E- Journals LIS E-Journals are now a significant body of literature Sitations are largely to content Sitations are different from citations Sitations may be more accurate than citations E-Journals have potential for new measures of effectiveness

Lessons for publishers Titles and URLs should be distinct and consistent to make sitation/citation evaluation more effective Links to journals increase visibility Lists of related journals “live” sitations in articles Have content worth linking to