A focus on Psychology Research at the University of Houston

USING SCOPUS TO STUDY CITING BEHAVIOR FOR COLLECTION DEVELOPMENT

Irene Ke, MLS, MSPsychology & Social Work LibrarianUniversity of Houstonijke@uh.edu

Psychology Research at UH A university in transition: Tier One initiative Psychology publication trend (University of

Houston)

Data source: SCOPUS

Project Goal: Gather evidence for collection decisions

Objectives: To learn

How psychology researchers use

information

Whether the library collection meets

campus research needs

Essential questions

How psychology researchers use information What journals were cited and how often? Time range (age) of sources cited (Do old materials

matter?) Types of materials cited (Do books matter?)

Whether the library collection meets campus research needs Does the library subscribe to the journals that

researchers cited? Do researchers use the journals provided by the library?

Methodology Data Collection: • Citation data: SCOPUS

Strengths Limitations

• Usage data: COUNTER, Serials Solutions (Focus on journals only) Download times

Papers included in the study: • Published by a UH researcher between 2000 to 2013• Papers were classified to “psychology” as a subject

in SCOPUS

Preliminary Finding I

The peak time of an article being cited is between 1 to 8 years after its publication.

0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 450

50

100

150

200

2502013

2012

2007

2006

2001

2000

“The year the cited source was published” minus “the year the citing paper was published”

Tim

es o

f getti

ng c

ited

Time range (age) of sources cited (Do old materials matter?):

“The year the cited source was published” minus “the year the citing paper was published”

Note: all source types are included in this analysis. It covers 6 years’ data: 2000, 2001, 2006, 2007, 2012, 2013

5 years

Preliminary Finding II

A wide range of journals were cited: 543 journal titles were cited from 2002 to 2013

Only a small portion of journals get cited often: 33 titles were cited more than 100 times (about 6% of

all cited journals) 368 titles were cited equal to or less than 20 times

(about 68% of all cited journals)

Most frequently cited journal: Journal of Applied Psychology (567 times)

How do campus researchers cite journals?

Titles cited between 20

to 100 times. n=142

“26% of to-tal”Titles cited

less than or equal to 20 times. n =

368 “68% of total

“

N= 543

Titles cited more than 100 times.n= 33, “6% of total”

Preliminary Finding II, Visual presentation

How do campus researchers cite journals?

Preliminary Finding III

The library has a great coverage of the journals

that were cited often:

Do we subscribe to the journals that got cited?

 

Journals were cited≥ 21

times

Journals were cited ≥ 100

times

Number of titles 175 33

Number of titles that Library

subscribes to (full access)

161 33

% 92% 100%

Preliminary Finding IV

Citation (from Scopus) and usage data (from 360 Counter, Serials Solutions) comparison

Number of times a title was cited in 2012 Number of times a title was downloaded in 2012

Does citation data aligns with usage (download) data?

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

Jour

nal o

f App

lied

psyc

holo

gy

Jour

nal o

f Man

agem

ent

Psyc

holo

gica

l Med

icin

e

Human

Res

ourc

e Dev

elop

men

t Qua

rterly

Viole

nce

& Victim

s

Organ

izat

iona

l Dyn

amics

0

1000

2000

3000

4000

5000

6000

7000

N=69 titles

Preliminary thoughts

For collection development Decisions on old materials Build the “core” Multidisciplinary approach Citation data only tells a part of the story, other types of

data are needed

For outreach Data proves our support to campus research (no apology

anymore!) Data helps us to communicate with faculty members

What are the implications?

Work still in progress

Type of materials cited

Subject areas cited

Questions?

ijke@uh.edu