This study presents data from 325 faculty of major universities in the USA, Canada, the UK, Ireland and Australia about how they view bibliometric indicators such as the h-index, how trustworthy they are believed to be and how often they are checked or calculated.
The study presents data on the use of particular tools and indicators, giving specific data for all of the following: Web of Science, Scopus, Google Scholar, ORCHID ID, Thomsen-Reuters Research ID, Scimago, bepress, SciVal, JSTORE, International, SciFinder, arXiv and CrossRef, among others.
Data in the report is broken out by tenure status, gender, age, semester teaching load, academic field, academic title, and political views of the survey participant, as well as by the country or origin, public/private status and world ranking of the universities of the survey participants.
Just a few of this 113-page report’s many findings are that:
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SciFinder use was reported by 7% of respondents, especially at private institutions (10%), by faculty 30 years or younger (22%),
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Google Scholar was the most frequently used tool for bibliometrics, with 85% of the respondents reporting its use. All faculty age 30 or under reported using Google Scholar with this percentage declining to 77% of faculty 60 years and over.
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76% of faculty in the UK/Ireland had an ORCHID ID vs. only 35% in the USA.
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Political conservatives are more likely than those with more centrist or left-wing views to feel that bibliometric measures are trustworthy.
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Faculty in literature and languages found the most difficulty in finding journal impact factor data for use in their career planning.