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Correlation study between citation count and Mendeley readership of the articles of Sri Lankan authors

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Abstract

In this paper, the correlation of the citation count and Mendeley readership score of the articles by the Sri Lankan authors was studied. The study presents how the correlation exists among different Web of Science (WoS) subject categories and in different Mendeley user categories. Nine thousand one hundred thirty articles of Sri Lankan authors are collected from the WoS database, with a minimum of 5 citation counts, and analyzed to trace their correlation with Mendeley readership from different aspects. Quantitative methods were applied in the study. A strong correlation exists between the citation count and Mendeley readership. 'Chemistry', 'Public, Environmental & Occupational Health' and 'Engineering' were observed as the highly indexed subjects in the category-wise analysis, though it does not affect the readership and citation. Subjects with a higher Mendeley readership score strongly correlate with a citation in different user categories, and articles with less than 200 readership scores mostly tend to show a negative correlation. Mendeley is more prevalent among researchers, Ph.D. students and master's students than in other user categories, and in all the user categories, correlation is more or less favourable.

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Funding

It is to certify that the authors have no affiliations with or involvement in any organization or entity with any financial or non-financial interest in the subject matter or materials discussed in this manuscript. The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. The article is the authors' original work and hasn't received prior publication.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Library and Information Science, North-Eastern Hill University, Shillong, India

    S. Ravikumar & Bidyut Bikash Boruah

  2. Eastern University, Chenkaladi, Sri Lanka

    M. N. Ravikumar

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  1. S. Ravikumar
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  2. Bidyut Bikash Boruah
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  3. M. N. Ravikumar
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Contributions

SR performed conceptualization, data analysis and editing. BBB performed data collection, writing-original draft. MNR performed writing- review, visualization and editing.

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Correspondence to S. Ravikumar.

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Ravikumar, S., Boruah, B.B. & Ravikumar, M.N. Correlation study between citation count and Mendeley readership of the articles of Sri Lankan authors. Scientometrics 127, 4873–4885 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-022-04470-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-022-04470-y

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