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In the humanities and social sciences, bibliometric methods for the assessment of research performance are (so far) less common. This study uses a concrete example in an attempt to evaluate a research institute from the area of social sciences and humanities with the help of data from Google Scholar ( GS). In order to use GS for a bibliometric study, we developed procedures for the normalization of citation impact, building on the procedures of classical bibliometrics. In order to test the convergent validity of the normalized citation impact scores, we calculated normalized scores for a subset of the publications based on data from the Web of Science ( WoS) and Scopus. Even if scores calculated with the help of GS and the WoS/ Scopus are not identical for the different publication types (considered here), they are so similar that they result in the same assessment of the institute investigated in this study: For example, the institute's papers whose journals are covered in the WoS are cited at about an average rate (compared with the other papers in the journals). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The emergence of large multi‐institutional digital libraries has opened the door to aggregate‐level examinations of the published word. Such large‐scale analysis offers a new way to pursue traditional problems in the humanities and social sciences, using digital methods to ask routine questions of large corpora. However, inquiry into multiple centuries of books is constrained by the burdens of scale, where statistical inference is technically complex and limited by hurdles to access and flexibility. This work examines the role that exploratory data analysis and visualization tools may play in understanding large bibliographic datasets. We present one such tool, HathiTrust+Bookworm, which allows multifaceted exploration of the multimillion work HathiTrust Digital Library, and center it in the broader space of scholarly tools for exploratory data analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is no information search system can assist young children's known picture book search needs since the information is not organized according to their cognitive abilities and needs. Therefore, this study explored young children's known picture book search strategies and extracted picture book search elements by simulating a search scenario and playing a picture book search game. The study found 29 elements children used to search for known picture books. Then, these elements are classified into three dimensions: The first dimension is the concept category of an element. The second dimension is an element's status in the story. The third dimension indicates where an element appears in a picture book. Additionally, it revealed a young children's general search strategy: Children first use auditory elements that they hear from the adults during reading. After receiving error returns, they add visual elements that they see by themselves in picture books. The findings can not only help to understand young children's known‐item search and reformulation strategies during searching but also provide theoretical support for the development of a picture book information organization schema in the search system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An online exchange system is a web service that allows communities to trade items without the burden of manually selecting them, which saves users' time and effort. Even though online book‐exchange systems have been developed, their services can further be improved by reducing the workload imposed on their users. To accomplish this task, we propose a recommendation‐based book exchange system, called EasyEx, which identifies potential exchanges for a user solely based on a list of items the user is willing to part with. EasyEx is a novel and unique book‐exchange system because unlike existing online exchange systems, it does not require a user to create and maintain a wish list, which is a list of items the user would like to receive as part of the exchange. Instead, EasyEx directly suggests items to users to increase serendipity and as a result expose them to items which may be unfamiliar, but appealing, to them. In identifying books to be exchanged, EasyEx employs known recommendation strategies, that is, personalized mean and matrix factorization, to predict book ratings, which are treated as the degrees of appeal to a user on recommended books. Furthermore, EasyEx incorporates OptaPlanner, which solves constraint satisfaction problems efficiently, as part of the recommendation‐based exchange process to create exchange cycles. Experimental results have verified that EasyEx offers users recommended books that satisfy the users' interests and contributes to the item‐exchange mechanism with a new design methodology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We describe the intellectual and physical properties of books as manifestations, expressions, and works and assess the current indexing and metadata structure of monographs in the Book Citation Index (BKCI). Our focus is on the interrelationship of these properties in light of the Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR). Data pertaining to monographs were collected from the Danish PURE repository system as well as the BKCI (2005-2015) via their International Standard Book Numbers (ISBNs). Each ISBN was then matched to the same ISBN and family-related ISBNs cataloged in two additional databases: OCLC-WorldCat and Goodreads. With the retrieval of all family-related ISBNs, we were able to determine the number of monograph expressions present in the BKCI and their collective relationship to one work. Our results show that the majority of missing expressions from the BKCI are emblematic (i.e., first editions of monographs) and that both the indexing and metadata structure of this commercial database could significantly improve with the introduction of distinct expression IDs (i.e., for every distinct edition) and unifying work-related IDs. This improved metadata structure would support the collection of more accurate publication and citation counts for monographs and has implications for developing new indicators based on bibliographic levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although peer-review and citation counts are commonly used to help assess the scholarly impact of published research, informal reader feedback might also be exploited to help assess the wider impacts of books, such as their educational or cultural value. The social website Goodreads seems to be a reasonable source for this purpose because it includes a large number of book reviews and ratings by many users inside and outside of academia. To check this, Goodreads book metrics were compared with different book-based impact indicators for 15,928 academic books across broad fields. Goodreads engagements were numerous enough in the arts (85% of books had at least one), humanities (80%), and social sciences (67%) for use as a source of impact evidence. Low and moderate correlations between Goodreads book metrics and scholarly or non-scholarly indicators suggest that reader feedback in Goodreads reflects the many purposes of books rather than a single type of impact. Although Goodreads book metrics can be manipulated, they could be used guardedly by academics, authors, and publishers in evaluations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although news stories target the general public and are sometimes inaccurate, they can serve as sources of real-world information for researchers. This article investigates the extent to which academics exploit journalism using content and citation analyses of online BBC News stories cited by Scopus articles. A total of 27,234 Scopus-indexed publications have cited at least one BBC News story, with a steady annual increase. Citations from the arts and humanities (2.8% of publications in 2015) and social sciences (1.5%) were more likely than citations from medicine (0.1%) and science (<0.1%). Surprisingly, half of the sampled Scopus-cited science and technology (53%) and medicine and health (47%) stories were based on academic research, rather than otherwise unpublished information, suggesting that researchers have chosen a lower-quality secondary source for their citations. Nevertheless, the BBC News stories that were most frequently cited by Scopus, Google Books, and Wikipedia introduced new information from many different topics, including politics, business, economics, statistics, and reports about events. Thus, news stories are mediating real-world knowledge into the academic domain, a potential cause for concern. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Goodreads is an Amazon-owned book-based social web site for members to share books, read, review books, rate books, and connect with other readers. Goodreads has tens of millions of book reviews, recommendations, and ratings that may help librarians and readers to select relevant books. This article describes a first investigation of the properties of Goodreads users, using a random sample of 50,000 members. The results suggest that about three quarters of members with a public profile are female, and that there is little difference between male and female users in patterns of behavior, except for females registering more books and rating them less positively. Goodreads librarians and super-users engage extensively with most features of the site. The absence of strong correlations between book-based and social usage statistics (e.g., numbers of friends, followers, books, reviews, and ratings) suggests that members choose their own individual balance of social and book activities and rarely ignore one at the expense of the other. Goodreads is therefore neither primarily a book-based website nor primarily a social network site but is a genuine hybrid, social navigation site. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Individual academics and research evaluators often need to assess the value of published research. Although citation counts are a recognized indicator of scholarly impact, alternative data is needed to provide evidence of other types of impact, including within education and wider society. Wikipedia is a logical choice for both of these because the role of a general encyclopaedia is to be an understandable repository of facts about a diverse array of topics and hence it may cite research to support its claims. To test whether Wikipedia could provide new evidence about the impact of scholarly research, this article counted citations to 302,328 articles and 18,735 monographs in English indexed by Scopus in the period 2005 to 2012. The results show that citations from Wikipedia to articles are too rare for most research evaluation purposes, with only 5% of articles being cited in all fields. In contrast, a third of monographs have at least one citation from Wikipedia, with the most in the arts and humanities. Hence, Wikipedia citations can provide extra impact evidence for academic monographs. Nevertheless, the results may be relatively easily manipulated and so Wikipedia is not recommended for evaluations affecting stakeholder interests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Little is known about what factors influence users' continued use of social cataloging sites. This study therefore examines the impacts of key factors from theories of information systems ( IS) success and sense of community ( SOC) on users' continuance intention in the social cataloging context. Data collected from an online survey of 323 social cataloging users provide empirical support for the research model. The findings indicate that both information quality ( IQ) and system quality ( SQ) are significant predictors of satisfaction and SOC, which in turn lead to users' intentions to continue using these sites. In addition, SOC was found to affect continuance intention not only directly, but also indirectly through satisfaction. Theoretically, this study draws attention to a largely unexplored but essential area of research in the social cataloging literature and provides a fundamental basis to understand the determinants of continued social cataloging usage. From a managerial perspective, the findings suggest that social cataloging service providers should constantly focus their efforts on the quality control of their contents and system, and the enhancement of SOC among their users. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has been demonstrated that online consumer reviews are an important source of information that affect individuals' purchase decision making. To understand the influence of online reviews, this study extends prior research on information adoption by incorporating the perspective of herd behavior. We develop and empirically test a research model using data collected from an existing book review site. We report 2 major findings. First, argument quality and source credibility predict information usefulness, which affects the adoption of online reviews. Second, we determine that the adoption of online reviews is also influenced by 2 herd factors, namely, discounting own information and imitating others. We further identify the key determinants of these herd factors, including background homophily and attitude homophily. The theoretical and practical implications are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The readability levels of books identify suitable reading materials. Unfortunately, the majority of published books are assigned a readability level range, which is not useful to readers who look for books at a particular grade level. Existing readability formulas/analysis tools require at least an excerpt of a book to estimate its readability level, which is a severe constraint, since copyright laws prohibit book contents from being made publicly accessible. To alleviate the constraint, we have developed TRoLL which relies on publicly accessible online book metadata, in addition to using a book's snippet, if it is available, to predict its readability level. Based on a multi-dimensional regression analysis, TRoLL determines the grade level of any book instantly, even without a sample of its text, and considers its topical suitability, which is unique. Furthermore, TRoLL is a significant contribution to the educational community, since its computed book readability levels can enrich K-12 readers' book selections and aid parents, teachers, and librarians in locating reading materials suitable for their K-12 readers, which can be a time-consuming and frustrating task that does not always yield a quality outcome. Conducted empirical studies have verified the prediction accuracy of TRoLL and demonstrated its superiority over well-known readability formulas/analysis tools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although citation counts are often used to evaluate the research impact of academic publications, they are problematic for books that aim for educational or cultural impact. To fill this gap, this article assesses whether a number of simple metrics derived from Amazon.com reviews of academic books could provide evidence of their impact. Based on a set of 2,739 academic monographs from 2008 and a set of 1,305 best-selling books in 15 Amazon.com academic subject categories, the existence of significant but low or moderate correlations between citations and numbers of reviews, combined with other evidence, suggests that online book reviews tend to reflect the wider popularity of a book rather than its academic impact, although there are substantial disciplinary differences. Metrics based on online reviews are therefore recommended for the evaluation of books that aim at a wide audience inside or outside academia when it is important to capture the broader impacts of educational or cultural activities and when they cannot be manipulated in advance of the evaluation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is a publisher ranking study based on a citation data grant from Elsevier, specifically, book titles cited in Scopus history journals (2007-2011) and matching metadata from WorldCat® (i.e., OCLC numbers, ISBN codes, publisher records, and library holding counts). Using both resources, we have created a unique relational database designed to compare citation counts to books with international library holdings or libcitations for scholarly book publishers. First, we construct a ranking of the top 500 publishers and explore descriptive statistics at the level of publisher type (university, commercial, other) and country of origin. We then identify the top 50 university presses and commercial houses based on total citations and mean citations per book ( CPB). In a third analysis, we present a map of directed citation links between journals and book publishers. American and British presses/publishing houses tend to dominate the work of library collection managers and citing scholars; however, a number of specialist publishers from Europe are included. Distinct clusters from the directed citation map indicate a certain degree of regionalism and subject specialization, where some journals produced in languages other than English tend to cite books published by the same parent press. Bibliometric rankings convey only a small part of how the actual structure of the publishing field has evolved; hence, challenges lie ahead for developers of new citation indices for books and bibliometricians interested in measuring book and publisher impacts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study analyzes coauthorship patterns in the social sciences and humanities ( SSH) for the period 2000 to 2010. The basis for the analysis is the Flemish Academic Bibliographic Database for the Social Sciences and Humanities ( VABB- SHW), a comprehensive bibliographic database of peer-reviewed publications in the SSH by researchers affiliated with Flemish universities. Combining data on journal articles and book chapters, our findings indicate that collaborative publishing in the SSH is increasing, though considerable differences between disciplines remain. Conversely, we did observe a sharp decline in single-author publishing. We further demonstrate that coauthored SSH articles in journals indexed in the Web of Science ( WoS) generally have a higher (and growing) number of coauthors than do either those in non- WoS journals or book chapters. This illustrates the need to include non- WoS data and book chapters when studying coauthorship in the SSH. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]