Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Can Microsoft Academic be used for citation analysis of preprint archives? The case of the Social Science Research Network

  • Published:
Scientometrics Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Preprint archives play an important scholarly communication role within some fields. The impact of archives and individual preprints are difficult to analyse because online repositories are not indexed by the Web of Science or Scopus. In response, this article assesses whether the new Microsoft Academic can be used for citation analysis of preprint archives, focusing on the Social Science Research Network (SSRN). Although Microsoft Academic seems to index SSRN comprehensively, it groups a small fraction of SSRN papers into an easily retrievable set that has variations in character over time, making any field normalisation or citation comparisons untrustworthy. A brief parallel analysis of arXiv suggests that similar results would occur for other online repositories. Systematic analyses of preprint archives are nevertheless possible with Microsoft Academic when complete lists of archive publications are available from other sources because of its promising coverage and citation results.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6
Fig. 7

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. https://www.ssrn.com/en/index.cfm/rps/.

  2. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/JELJOUR_Results.cfm?form_name=journalBrowse&journal_id=2127729.

  3. https://www.scilit.net/journals/28185.

  4. http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4416-0164.

  5. http://www.mendeley.com/research/exchangerate-passthrough-g7-countries-1.

  6. https://www.ssrn.com/en/.

  7. https://academic.microsoft.com/#/detail/60730585.

  8. https://www.ssrn.com/en/index.cfm/ssrn-faq/#version_group.

  9. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/displayabstractsearch.cfm.

  10. https://academic.microsoft.com/#/detail/2133840132.

  11. https://academic.microsoft.com/#/detail/2199326065.

  12. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-gb/azure/cognitive-services/academic-knowledge/entityattributes.

References

  • Brown, L. D. (2003). Ranking journals using social science research network downloads. Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, 20(3), 291–307.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Brown, L. D., & Laksmana, I. (2004). Ranking accounting Ph.D. programs and faculties using social science research network downloads. Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, 22(3), 249–266.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Davis, P., & Fromerth, M. (2007). Does the arXiv lead to higher citations and reduced publisher downloads for mathematics articles? Scientometrics, 71(2), 203–215.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Delgado López-Cózar, E., & Cabezas-Clavijo, Á. (2012). Google Scholar Metrics: An unreliable tool for assessing scientific journals. El Profesional de la Información, 21(4), http://www.elprofesionaldelainformacion.com/contenidos/2012/julio/15_eng.pdf.

  • Delgado López-Cózar, E., Robinson-García, N., & Torres-Salinas, D. (2014). The Google Scholar experiment: How to index false papers and manipulate bibliometric indicators. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 65(3), 446–454.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Di Cesare, R., Luzi, D., Ricci, M., Ruggieri, R., della Ricerche, C. N., & della Repubblica, S. (2011). A profile of Italian Working papers in RePEc. In Proceedings of the twelfth international conference on grey literature (pp. 1–12). Amsterdam: TextRelease.

  • Eisenberg, T. (2006). Assessing the SSRN-based law school rankings. Indiana Law Journal, 81(1), 285–291.

    Google Scholar 

  • Falagas, M. E., Pitsouni, E. I., Malietzis, G. A., & Pappas, G. (2008). Comparison of PubMed, Scopus, web of science, and Google scholar: Strengths and weaknesses. The FASEB Journal, 22(2), 338–342.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gunn, W. (2013). Social signals reflect academic impact: What it means when a scholar adds a paper to Mendeley. Information Standards Quarterly, 25(2), 33–39.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Halevi, G., Moed, H., & Bar-Ilan, J. (2017). Suitability of Google Scholar as a source of scientific information and as a source of data for scientific evaluation—Review of the Literature. Journal of Informetrics, 11(3), 823–834.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Harzing, A. W. (2007). Publish or perish. http://www.harzing.com/pop.htm.

  • Harzing, A. W. (2016). Microsoft Academic (Search): A phoenix arisen from the ashes? Scientometrics, 108(3), 1637–1647.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Harzing, A. W., & Alakangas, S. (2017a). Microsoft Academic: Is the phoenix getting wings? Scientometrics, 110(1), 371–383.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Harzing, A. W., & Alakangas, S. (2017b). Microsoft Academic is one year old: The Phoenix is ready to leave the nest. Scientometrics, 112(3), 1887–1894.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Harzing, A. W. K., & Van der Wal, R. (2008). Google Scholar as a new source for citation analysis. Ethics in Science and Environmental Politics, 8(1), 61–73.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Haustein, S., Larivière, V., Thelwall, M., Amyot, D., & Peters, I. (2014). Tweets vs. Mendeley readers: How do these two social media metrics differ? IT-Information Technology, 56(5), 207–215.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • HEFCE. (2015). The Metric Tide: Correlation analysis of REF2014 scores and metrics (Supplementary Report II to the Independent Review of the Role of Metrics in Research Assessment and Management). http://www.hefce.ac.uk/pubs/rereports/Year/2015/metrictide/Title,104463,en.html.

  • Hug, S. E., & Brändle, M. P. (2017). The coverage of Microsoft Academic: Analyzing the publication output of a university. Scientometrics. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-017-2535-3.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hug, S. E., Ochsner, M., & Brändle, M. P. (2017). Citation analysis with Microsoft Academic. Scientometrics, 111(1), 371–378. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-017-2247-8.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Jaffe, A. B., Trajtenberg, M., & Henderson, R. (1993). Geographic localization of knowledge spillovers as evidenced by patent citations. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 108(3), 577–598.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Jamali, H. R. (2017). Copyright compliance and infringement in ResearchGate full-text journal articles. Scientometrics, 112(1), 241–254.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Karki, M. M. S. (1997). Patent citation analysis: A policy analysis tool. World Patent Information, 19(4), 269–272.

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  • Kousha, K., Thelwall, M., & Abdoli, M. (2018). Can Microsoft Academic assess the early citation impact of in-press articles? A multi-discipline exploratory analysis. Journal of Informetrics, 12(1), 287–298.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Li, X., Thelwall, M., & Kousha, K. (2015). The role of arXiv, RePEc, SSRN and PMC in formal scholarly communication. Aslib Journal of Information Management, 67(6), 614–635.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Luce, R. E. (2001). E-prints intersect the digital library: inside the Los Alamos arXiv. Issues in Science and Technology Librarianship, 29(Winter). http://webdoc.sub.gwdg.de/edoc/aw/ucsb/istl/01-winter/article3.html.

  • Maflahi, N., & Thelwall, M. (2018). How quickly do publications get read? The evolution of Mendeley reader counts for new articles. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 69(1), 158–167.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mohammadi, E., Thelwall, M., & Kousha, K. (2016). Can Mendeley bookmarks reflect readership? A survey of user motivations. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 67(5), 1198–1209. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.23477.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Orduña-Malea, E., Martín-Martín, A., & Delgado-López-Cózar, E. (2016). The next bibliometrics: ALMetrics (Author Level Metrics) and the multiple faces of author impact. El Profesional de la Información, 25(3), 485–496.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sinha, A., Shen, Z., Song, Y., Ma, H., Eide, D., Hsu, B. J. P., et al. (2015). An overview of Microsoft Academic service (mas) and applications. In Proceedings of the 24th international conference on world wide web (pp. 243–246). New York, NY: ACM Press.

  • SSRN. (2017). Is my paper eligible for distribution in a SSRN eJournal? https://www.ssrn.com/en/index.cfm/ssrn-faq/#distribution_eligibility.

  • Sud, P., & Thelwall, M. (2014). Evaluating altmetrics. Scientometrics, 98(2), 1131–1143. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-013-1117-2.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Thelwall, M. (2017a). Are Mendeley reader counts high enough for research evaluations when articles are published? Aslib Journal of Information Management, 69(2), 174–183. https://doi.org/10.1108/AJIM-01-2017-0028.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Thelwall, M. (2017b). Microsoft Academic: A multidisciplinary comparison of citation counts with Scopus and Mendeley for 29 journals. Journal of Informetrics, 11(4), 1201–1212.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Thelwall, M. (2017c). Are Mendeley reader counts useful impact indicators in all fields? Scientometrics, 113(3), 1721–1731.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Thelwall, M. (2018a). Microsoft Academic automatic document searches: Accuracy for journal articles and suitability for citation analysis. Journal of Informetrics, 12(1), 1–9.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Thelwall, M. (2018b). Does Microsoft Academic find early citations? Scientometrics, 114(1), 325–334.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Thelwall, M., & Fairclough, R. (2015). Geometric journal impact factors correcting for individual highly cited articles. Journal of Informetrics, 9(2), 263–272.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Thelwall, M., Haustein, S., Larivière, V., & Sugimoto, C. (2013). Do altmetrics work? Twitter and ten other candidates. PLoS ONE, 8(5), e64841. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0064841.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Thelwall, M., & Sud, P. (2016). Mendeley readership counts: An investigation of temporal and disciplinary differences. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 57(6), 3036–3050. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.2355.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Thelwall, M., & Wilson, P. (2016). Mendeley readership altmetrics for medical articles: An analysis of 45 fields. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 67(8), 1962–1972. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.23501.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • van Leeuwen, T. N., & Calero Medina, C. (2012). Redefining the field of economics: Improving field normalization for the application of bibliometric techniques in the field of economics. Research Evaluation, 21(1), 61–70.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Van Noorden, R. (2014). Online collaboration: Scientists and the social network. Nature, 512(7513), 126–129.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Waltman, L., van Eck, N. J., van Leeuwen, T. N., Visser, M. S., & van Raan, A. F. (2011). Towards a new crown indicator: An empirical analysis. Scientometrics, 87(3), 467–481.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • West, J. D., Jensen, M. C., Dandrea, R. J., Gordon, G. J., & Bergstrom, C. T. (2013). Author-level Eigenfactor metrics: Evaluating the influence of authors, institutions, and countries within the social science research network community. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 64(4), 787–801.

    Google Scholar 

  • Zahedi, Z., Costas, R., & Wouters, P. (2014a). How well developed are altmetrics? A cross-disciplinary analysis of the presence of ‘alternative metrics’ in scientific publications. Scientometrics, 101(2), 1491–1513.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zahedi, Z., Haustein, S. & Bowman, T. (2014). Exploring data quality and retrieval strategies for Mendeley reader counts. Presentation at SIGMET Metrics 2014 workshop, 5 November 2014. Available: http://www.slideshare.net/StefanieHaustein/sigmetworkshop-asist2014.

  • Zimmermann, C. (2013). Academic rankings with RePEc. Econometrics, 1(3), 249–280.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zitt, M. (2012). The journal impact factor: Angel, devil, or scapegoat? A comment on JK Vanclay’s article 2011. Scientometrics, 92(2), 485–503.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Mathematics and Computing, University of Wolverhampton, Wulfruna Street, Wolverhampton, WV1 1LY, UK

    Michael Thelwall

Authors
  1. Michael Thelwall
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Michael Thelwall.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Thelwall, M. Can Microsoft Academic be used for citation analysis of preprint archives? The case of the Social Science Research Network. Scientometrics 115, 913–928 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-018-2704-z

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-018-2704-z

Keywords

Search

Navigation