Abstract
Databases are the discovery mechanisms used for searching and browsing scholarly information. Citings to Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) databases used by computer scientists, engineers, and mathematicians were analyzed for coverage and impact in the literature. This study uses the Web of Science (WoS) database to conduct a cited reference search to ACM Digital Library, Engineering Village, IEEE Xplore, and MathSciNet. The respective citation counts were compared by document types, publication year, language, country, organization, WoS category, and source title. The resulting low citation counts and lack of reference formatting agreement to these databases were in line with the predicted hypothesis. The impact of STEM databases in citations appears to be undercounted since they are not often included in citations. This article is intended to spark debate on the practice of citing databases in scholarly publications.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
American Mathematical Society. (2020a). MathSciNet. https://mathscinet.ams.org/mathscinet. Accessed 22 Oct 2020.
American Mathematical Society. (2020b). MathSciNet. http://www.ams.org/publications/math-reviews/mathsciprice. Accessed 22 Oct 2020.
Association of Computing Machinery. (n.d.). ACM Digital Library resource center: The digital library. https://libraries.acm.org/digital-library. Accessed 22 Oct 2020.
Association of Computing Machinery. (2020). ACM Digital Library. https://dl.acm.org. Accessed 22 Oct 2020.
Bandyopadhyay, A. K. (1996). Citation analysis of doctoral dissertations in mathematics using dBase III+. Annals of Library Science and Documentation, 44(3), 81–107.
Becker, D. A., & Chiware, E. R. (2015). Citation analysis of masters’ theses and doctoral dissertations: Balancing library collections with students’ research information needs. The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 41(5), 613–620. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.acalib.2015.06.022.
Bharti, N., & Bossart, J. (2016). Peer-reviewed publications analysis of chemical engineering faculty at the University of Florida. Performance Measurement and Metrics, 17(3), 263–272. https://doi.org/10.1108/PMM-04-2016-0014.
Brush, D. A. (2015). Engineering Master of Science theses at Rowan University: A citation analysis of the first nine years. Science & Technology Libraries, 34(2), 109–121. https://doi.org/10.1080/0194262X.2015.1031927.
Cardona, M., & Marx, W. (2007). Anatomy of the ICDS series: A bibliometric analysis. Physica B: Condensed Matter, 401–406, 1–6. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physb.2007.08.101.
Chen, C., Sun, K., Wu, G., Tang, Q., Qin, J., Chiu, K., et al. (2009). The impact of internet resources on scholarly communication: A citation analysis. Scientometrics, 81(2), 459–474. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-008-2180-y.
Clarivate Analytics. (2020a). Web of Science core collection: Introduction. http://clarivate.libguides.com/woscc/basics. Accessed 22 Oct 2020.
Clarivate Analytics. (2020b). Web of science core collection: Journal evaluation process and selection criteria. https://clarivate.com/webofsciencegroup/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/08/Journal-Evaluation.pdf. Accessed 22 Oct 2020.
Clarivate Analytics. (2020c). Web of science. https://clarivate.com/webofsciencegroup/solutions/web-of-science/. Accessed 22 Oct 2020.
Clarivate Analytics. (2020d). Web of science core collection help: Searching the document type field. https://images.webofknowledge.com/images/help/WOS/hs_document_type.html. Accessed 22 Oct 2020.
Clarivate Analytics. (2020e). Web of science core collection help. https://images.webofknowledge.com/images/help/WOS/hp_subject_category_terms_tasca.html. Accessed 22 Oct 2020.
Currie, L., & Monroe-Gulick, A. (2013). What do our faculty use? an interdisciplinary citation analysis study. The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 39(6), 471–480. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.acalib.2013.08.016.
Dommermuth, E. (2017). MathSciNet. The Charleston Advisor, 18(3), 29–33. https://doi.org/10.5260/chara.18.3.29.
Dotson, D. S., & Franks, T. P. (2015). Winning the popularity contest: Researcher preference when selecting resources for civil engineering, computer science, mathematics and physics dissertations. Issues in Science and Technology Librarianship. https://doi.org/10.5062/F4N29TZK.
Dressel, W. (2017). Engineering Village. The Charleston Advisor, 19(1), 19–22. https://doi.org/10.5260/chara.19.1.19.
Eckel, E. J. (2009). The emerging engineering scholar: A citation analysis of theses and dissertations at Western Michigan University. Issues in Science & Technology Librarianship. https://doi.org/10.5062/F4HD7SKP.
Elsevier. (2020a). Engineering Village. https://www.engineeringvillage.com/home.url. Accessed 22 Oct 2020.
Elsevier. (2020b). Ei Compendex. https://www.elsevier.com/solutions/engineering-village/content/compendex. Accessed 22 Oct 2020.
Flynn, K. H. (2020). Citation analysis of mathematics and statistics dissertations and theses from the University at Albany. Science & Technology Libraries, 39(2), 142–154. https://doi.org/10.1080/0194262X.2020.1727396.
Fransen, J. (2012). Literature use in engineering and computer science research: An analysis of works cited in dissertations and theses. Issues in Science and Technology Librarianship. https://doi.org/10.5062/F4Q81B1B.
Geetha, M., Pushpa, K., Mounesh, G., & Nanditha, S. P. (2016). Citation analysis of computer science theses. International Journal of Digital Library Services, 6(1), 72–86.
Gross, P. L. K., & Gross, E. M. (1927). College libraries and chemical education. Science, 66(1713), 385–389. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.66.1713.385.
Hennessey, C. L. (2012). ACM Digital Library. The Charleston Advisor, 13(4), 34–38. https://doi.org/10.5260/chara.13.4.34.
Hoffmann, K., & Doucette, L. (2012). A review of citation analysis methodologies for collection management. College & Research Libraries, 73(4), 321–335. https://doi.org/10.5860/crl-254.
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. (2020a). IEEE Xplore. https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/Xplore/home.jsp. Accessed 22 Oct 2020.
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. (2020b). About IEEE Xplore digital library. https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/aboutUs.jsp. Accessed 22 Oct 2020.
Johnson, P. C. (2014). Dissertations and discussions: Engineering graduate student research resource use at New Mexico State University. Collection Building, 33(1), 25–30. https://doi.org/10.1108/CB-09-2013-0037.
Kayongo, J., & Helm, C. (2012). Relevance of library collections for graduate student research: A citation analysis study of doctoral dissertations at Notre Dame. College & Research Libraries, 73(1), 47–67. https://doi.org/10.5860/crl-211.
Kelly, M. (2015). Citation patterns of engineering, statistics, and computer science researchers: An internal and external citation analysis across multiple engineering subfields. College & Research Libraries, 76(7), 859–882. https://doi.org/10.5860/crl.76.7.859.
Musser, L. R., & Conkling, T. W. (1996). Characteristics of engineering citations. Science & Technology Libraries, 15(4), 41–49. https://doi.org/10.1300/J122v15n04_04.
Peters, T. A. (2002). What’s the use? The value of e-resource usage statistics. New Library World, 103(1/2), 39–47. https://doi.org/10.1108/03074800210415050.
Qiu, J., Zhao, R., Yang, S., & Dong, K. (2017). Methods of citation analysis. In Informetrics: Theory, methods and applications (pp. 207–309). Singapore: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-4032-0_8.
Rowley, E. M., & Wagner, A. B. (2019). Citing of industry standards in scholarly publications. Issues in Science and Technology Librarianship. https://doi.org/10.29173/istl27.
Salami, M. O., & Olatokun, W. M. (2018). Citation analysis of Ph.D. theses at faculty of science, University of Ibadan, Nigeria. Issues in Science and Technology Librarianship. https://doi.org/10.5062/F4668BF1.
Sinn, R. N. (2005). A local citation analysis of mathematical and statistical dissertations. Science & Technology Libraries, 25(4), 25–37. https://doi.org/10.1300/J122v25n04_03.
Stephens, J., Hubbard, D. E., Pickett, C., & Kimball, R. (2013). Citation behavior of aerospace engineering faculty. The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 39(6), 451–457. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.acalib.2013.09.007.
Tomaszewski, R. (2017). Citations to chemical resources in scholarly articles: CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics and the Merck Index. Scientometrics, 112(3), 1865–1879. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-017-2437-4.
Tomaszewski, R. (2018). A comparative study of citations to chemical encyclopedias in scholarly articles: Kirk-Othmer Encyclopedia of Chemical Technology and Ullmann’s Encyclopedia of Industrial Chemistry. Scientometrics, 117(1), 175–189. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-018-2844-1.
Tomaszewski, R. (2019). Citations to chemical databases in scholarly articles: To cite or not to cite? Journal of Documentation, 75(6), 1317–1332. https://doi.org/10.1108/JD-12-2018-0214.
Verma, M., & Soni, J. (2011). Citation analysis of doctoral dissertations in the subject of mathematics submitted to Pt. Ravishankar Shukla University. In Proceedings of the 7th international conference on Webometrics, Informetrics and Scientometrics (WIS) & 12. COLLNET meeting, September 20-23 (pp. 545–554). Turkey: Istanbul Bilgi University.
Vrettas, G., & Sanderson, M. (2015). Conferences versus journals in computer science. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 66(12), 2674–2684. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.23349.
Wilde, M. (2016). IEEE Xplore Digital Library. The Charleston Advisor, 17(4), 24–30. https://doi.org/10.5260/chara.17.4.24.
Williams, V. K., & Fletcher, C. L. (2006). Materials used by master's students in engineering and implications for collection development: A citation analysis. Issues in Science and Technology Librarianship, 45. http://www.istl.org/06-winter/refereed1.html. Accessed 22 Oct 2020.
Young, B. (2014). What do engineering researchers cite? a citation analysis study of sixteen engineering journals. Issues in Science and Technology Librarianship. https://doi.org/10.5062/F44Q7RXF.
Zhang, L. (2018). Analyzing citation and research collaboration characteristics of faculty in aerospace, civil and environmental, electrical and computer, and mechanical engineering. College & Research Libraries, 79(2), 158–178. https://doi.org/10.5860/crl.79.2.158.
Acknowledgements
I thank the reviewers for their constructive insights and suggestions.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Tomaszewski, R. A study of citations to STEM databases: ACM Digital Library, Engineering Village, IEEE Xplore, and MathSciNet. Scientometrics 126, 1797–1811 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-020-03795-w
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-020-03795-w