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Exploring WorldCat identities as an altmetric information source: a library catalog analysis experiment in the field of Scientometrics

Scientometrics volume 126, pages 1725–1743 (2021)Cite this article

Abstract

Assessing the impact of scholarly books is a difficult research evaluation problem. Library Catalog Analysis facilitates the quantitative study, at different levels, of the impact and diffusion of academic books based on data about their availability in libraries. The WorldCat global catalog collates data on library holdings, offering a range of tools including the novel WorldCat Identities. This is based on author profiles and provides indicators relating to the availability of their books in library catalogs. Here, we investigate this new tool to identify its strengths and weaknesses based on a sample of Bibliometrics and Scientometrics authors. We review the problems that this entails and compare Library Catalog Analysis indicators with Google Scholar and Web of Science citations. The results show that WorldCat Identities can be a useful tool for book impact assessment but the value of its data is undermined by the provision of massive collections of ebooks to academic libraries.

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Data availability

All data are available at https://github.com/Wences91/library_catalog_wi/.

Notes

  1. Information drawn from the Directory of OCLC Members: https://www.oclc.org/en/contacts/libraries.html. Note that some OCLC sources put the number of member libraries at 17,983: https://www.oclc.org/en/about.html.

  2. https://www.oclc.org/research/areas/data-science/identities.html.

  3. Scholar Mirrors: [2020-02-11]: http://www.scholar-mirrors.infoec3.es/.

  4. Scholar Mirrors: Methodology [11/02/2020]: http://www.scholar-mirrors.infoec3.es/layout.php?id=methodology.

  5. WorldCat Identities API: https://pypi.org/project/worldcatidentities/.

  6. https://github.com/Wences91/library_catalog_wi/.

  7. https://about.proquest.com/blog/pqblog/2015/Brand-New-UKI-Edition-of-Academic-Complete.html.

  8. See also: https://about.proquest.com/products-services/Academic-Complete.html.

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Acknowledgements

This work has been possible thanks to financial support from “InfluScience—Scientists with social influence: a model to measure knowledge transfer in the digital society” (PID2019-109127RB-I00/SRA/10.13039/501100011033), a project funded by scientific research team grants from the Ministry of Science and Innovation of Spain. Daniel Torres-Salinas has received funding from the University of Granada’s “Plan Propio de Investigación y Transferencia” under the “Reincorporación de Jóvenes Doctores” grant. Wenceslao Arroyo-Machado has received funding from the Spanish Ministry of Universities under the FPU Grant (FPU18/05835).

Funding

This work has been possible thanks to financial support from “InfluScience - Scientists with social influence: a model to measure knowledge transfer in the digital society” (PID2019-109127RB-I00/SRA/10.13039/501100011033), a project funded by scientific research team grants from the Ministry of Science and Innovation of Spain.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Information and Communication Sciences, Faculty of Communication and Documentation, University of Granada, Granada, Spain

    Daniel Torres-Salinas & Wenceslao Arroyo-Machado

  2. Statistical Cybermetrics Research Group (SCRG), University of Wolverhampton, Wulfruna Street, Wolverhampton, WV1 1LY, UK

    Mike Thelwall

Authors
  1. Daniel Torres-Salinas
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  2. Wenceslao Arroyo-Machado
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  3. Mike Thelwall
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Contributions

All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation and data collection was carried out by WAM. Analysis were performed by DTS and MT the first draft of the manuscript was written by DTS and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Wenceslao Arroyo-Machado.

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Torres-Salinas, D., Arroyo-Machado, W. & Thelwall, M. Exploring WorldCat identities as an altmetric information source: a library catalog analysis experiment in the field of Scientometrics. Scientometrics 126, 1725–1743 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-020-03814-w

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-020-03814-w

Keywords

  • Library catalog analysis
  • Library holdings analysis
  • Libcitations
  • WorldCat Identities
  • WorldCat