Readership Data and Research Impact

TL;DR

This paper explores how various online readership data sources, especially Mendeley, can serve as indicators of academic impact, discussing their validity, applications, and limitations across disciplines.

Contribution

It provides an analysis of readership data's potential as research impact indicators and evaluates data quality and manipulation risks.

Findings

Mendeley shows promise as an impact indicator.

Readership data can inform research evaluation and collection development.

Data quality and manipulation issues are significant concerns.

Abstract

Reading academic publications is a key scholarly activity. Scholars accessing and recording academic publications online are producing new types of readership data. These include publisher, repository, and academic social network download statistics as well as online reference manager records. This chapter discusses the use of download and reference manager data for research evaluation and library collection development. The focus is on the validity and application of readership data as an impact indicator for academic publications across different disciplines. Mendeley is particularly promising in this regard, although all data sources are not subjected to rigorous quality control and can be manipulated.