Title of Paper:The impact of preprints in Library and Information Science: citations, usage, and social attention

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Date of Publication:2019-01-01

Included Journals:CPCI-S、CPCI-SSH

Volume:1

Page Number:459-470

Abstract:The objective of this paper is to explore the impact of preprints in scholarly and broader scientific communication. in particular, the following four indicators are used to examine the 550 arXiv and 5782 non-arXiv papers in three major journals in Library & Information Science (LIS): citations from Web of Science Core Collection (WoS), Scopus and Google Scholar, usage counts in WoS, Mendeley readers and Tweets. The results show that arXiv papers have significant citation advantage across WoS, Scopus and Google Scholar in each year. Google Scholar provides statistically significantly larger number of citations and more 'early citations' than Scopus and WoS, but does not reflect greater citation advantage for arXiv papers. The impact advantage of arXiv papers can also be observed in Mendeley, but to a much lesser extent in WoS usage counts and in Tweets, indicating that arXiv papers gain broader attention than non-arXiv papers not only from users of the WoS. Mendeley readership as well as the usage counts in WoS have strong correlations with WoS citations, which are much stronger than those of Tweets. We can also conclude that unlike citations, information derived from statistics on users, readers and social media needs further exploration and in the case of social media also proper context analysis.