Google Scholar as a Means for Quantitative Evaluation of German Research Output in Business Administration - Some Preliminary Results

Author(s):  
Wolfgang Breuer
2020 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rayana Jaafar ◽  
Vijay Pereira ◽  
Samer S. Saab ◽  
Abdul-Nasser El-Kassar

PurposeWith over 3,000 academic journals in the fields of Business and Economics, most academics face a hard time selecting an adequate journal to submit their work to. In today's demanding academic environment and with the presence of different journal ranking lists (JRLs), the selection becomes more difficult when considering employment, promotion and funding. The purpose of this paper is to explore key differences among multiple JRLs pertinent to the latter common objectives. An extensive analysis is conducted to compare the content of journals in the Australian Business Deans Council (ABDC) Journal Quality list, Scopus and Web of Science (WoS) in the fields of Business and Economics. Then, a case of a university with medium research output is considered where scholarly performance evaluation is based on the ABDC Journal Quality List.Design/methodology/approachAfter ranking journals in the fields of Business and Economics based on SCImago Journal Rank (SJR) indicator, JCR's Journal Impact Factor (JIF) and JCR's Eigenfactor (EF), a methodology is proposed to categorize journals in the three JRLs into the same categorization adopted by ABDC. The latter establishes a way to compare the four JRLs under consideration and serves as a basis to compare and analyze the content of journals in the ABDC Journal Quality list, Scopus and WoS. As a proxy impact metric, a normalized citation count is associated with each article based on Google Scholar. The publications of the considered university are then evaluated from the perspective of the four JRLs in terms of citation-based impact and quality while considering the exposure to popular world university ranking tables.FindingsFor journals classified under fourth tier by ABDC, over 53 and 59% are not indexed by Scopus and WoS, respectively. In this case study, over 42% of the publications appear in journals that are not listed in JCR despite the fact that over 94% of them are listed by the SJR list. Generally, publications that appear in journals listed by JCR achieve, on a yearly average, significantly higher citation rates when compared to those that appear in journals listed in ABDC and SJR Lists.Originality/valueA four-tier mapping is proposed for consistent comparison among JRLs. Normalized citation count associated with each article based on Google Scholar is employed for evaluation. The findings provide recommendations for scholars, administrators and global universities, including Euro-Med Universities, on which JRL can be more influential for both faculty development and positioning of the university.


2021 ◽  
Vol 45 (3-4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tom Kwanya

Research data management is an umbrella term used to describe activities related to the creation, organisation, structuring, naming, backing up, storage, conservation, and sharing of research data as well as all actions that guarantee security of research data. As is often the case, researchers from Sub-Saharan Africa are lagging behind their counterparts in developed countries in embracing the best practices of research data management. One of the factors to which this slow pace of adoption of research data management could be attributed, is inadequate research on the subject. The purpose of this paper is to analyse the quantity, quality, visibility and authorship of publications on research data management in Sub-Saharan Africa. Bibliometrics approaches were used to analyse publications on research data management from, and on, Sub-Saharan Africa which are currently indexed in Google Scholar. The index was chosen because it is free and is reputed to have liberal selection criteria which do not favour, or discriminate, any discipline or geographic regions. Data was retrieved from Google Scholar using Harzing’s “Publish or Perish” software and analysed using VOSviewer. The findings of the study revealed that the quantity, quality, visibility and authorship collaboration of scholarly publications on research data management in Sub-Saharan Africa is low. The findings may be used by libraries and research institutions in Sub-Saharan Africa to develop and promote best practices in research data management as a means of enhancing their research output and impact.


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