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Scientific Research and Communication

Indeed, the higher the visibility of articles, the higher the visibility of the
journals in which the articles will be published. This is the main reason
why (most) publishers allow this kind of prepublication. More about this
and the relation with open access (see also next chapter) can be found
e.g., in: Antelman (2004), Kurtz et al. (2005a,b), Brody, Harnad, and
Carr (2006), Eysenbach (2006), Zhang (2006), Craig, Plume, McVeigh,
Pringle, and Amin (2007), Kim (2011), Xia, Myers, and Wilhoite (2011),
and Solomon and Bjo ¨rk (2012a,b). On the following site the reader may
find what is allowed regarding prepublication and what is not: http://
www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/ (organized per publisher).
It should be made clear that downloads (as an indication of usage) do not
lead to visibility measurements comparable with citation results. For more
on this we refer the reader to Bollen, Van de Sompel, Smith, and Luce
(2005). An important point is that downloads are not influenced by delays in
publication (of the citing articles). The first measures general interest in a
particular new piece of knowledge; the second measures the incorporation
of this knowledge into a new document. Most article downloads take place
within the first months after publication (CIBER, 2011; Wan et al., 2010).
Indeed, aging curves (see Chapter 9: The Informetric Laws) based on cita-
tions and on downloads have a different distribution over time. We finally
recall that most altmetric indicators include a usage aspect.
2.4.3 Citation Analysis

With the advent of the SCI in 1963 (Garfield, 1963) a new evaluation
level, based on received citations, came into existence. Of course, since
the 19th Century it has become customary to refer to older work on
which a publication was based. It was Eugene Garfield who realized the
importance of these references, first as a tool for information retrieval via
so-called: “citation pearl growing” or “citation cycling” and as a help for
writing the history of a field or topic. However, Garfield and others soon
realized that such a citation index could also be used as a tool for research
evaluation. In its simplest form the idea was that the more citations
received, the better the research. Such an approach is, of course,
extremely naı ¨ve. Details about the proper use of a citation index for
evaluation purposes are given in Chapter 8, Research Evaluation.
Citation indexes such as Scopus, the SCI, the Social Science Citation
Index (SSCI), the Arts & Humanities Citation Index (A&HCI) and the
Book Citation Index (BCI) and their availability on the Internet are
discussed in Chapter 5, Publication and Citation Analysis.