مرکز منطقه ای اطلاع رساني علوم و فناوري - استناد وبي: شاخصي نوين در سنجش اثرگذاري تحقيقات علوم پزشكي

چكيده لاتين :

Introduction: Considering the increasing rate of scientific sources deposited on the Web, it was a motivating factor for researchers to examine citation impact of these digital sources in the scholarly communication cycle and hence new research area known as "Webometrics" has been developed. One of the key applications of Webometrics is "Web citations" analysis and their comparison with "traditional citations" such as ISI. The current study intends to determine the utility of Webometrics methods and tools in the evaluation of medical sciences research. Methods: 350 English research journal articles indexed by ISI in 2004 in general/internal medicine were selected. We searched articlesʹ title in the ISI Web of Science (WoS) as well as Google Scholar (GS) to obtain number of cited items for each article. Moreover, at the journal level we conducted same strategy for 56 Persian language medical journal titles. Statistical correlation tests and descriptive statistics were applied to examine, interpret and compare ISI citation and Web citation patterns. Results: We found significant correlation between ISI and Web citations from GS targeting the sample of 350 medical sciences articles. Analyzing the descriptive statistics showed that number, mean and median of citations to the articles from GS is remarkably more than ISI citations. Number, mean and median of GS citations for the 56 Persian language medical sciences journals were remarkably higher than ISI citations (301, 5.4, 4 vs. 99, 1.8, 0, respectively<0.05). Conclusion: The significant correlation between ISI and GS citations suggests that Web environment can be useful source of information for research evaluation. Comparison between descriptive statistics for general/internal medicine journal articles and Persian medical sciences journals also indicate that from Web environment we can extract the greater numbers and types of citations targeting medical science articles than ISI database which their citation impact have previously been invisible in the medical sciences research communication. Keywords: Citation; Medicine; Indicators; Internet; Effectiveness. Type of article: Original Article Received: 9 Apr, 2008 Accepted: 27 Aug, 2009