Correlation between the Articles Citations in Web of Science (WoS) and the Readership Rate in Mendeley and Research Gate (RG)

Introduction: Today, the dissemination methods of scientific publications and Web access ways to them have changed. It is essential to use the new altmetric measurements to assess the impact of research products in addition to traditional indicators. Purpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate and compare the correlation between the number of citations of Iranian scholars’ articles indexed in WoS and their readership rate in the two social networks of Mendeley and RG. Methods: The quantitative methods used in this analytical-descriptive survey such as the scientometric / altmetric and correlation study. The statistical population consisted of scientific articles by the Iranian scholars in WoS. The sample of the research was 165 retrieved articles with 200 citations or more, in WoS with the address “Iran”. Data was collected from WoS, Mendeley and RG and analyzed by using Excel and SPSS software. Findings: The findings showed that the correlation between the number of citations of the articles and the degree of readership in Mendeley was 0.352 based on the Spearman’s correlation coefficient. The correlation between the number of citations of the articles and the rate of readership in RG was 0.177. The findings indicated a positive and moderate correlation with a confidence level of 99% for Mendeley and a positive, but poor correlation for RG with 95% confidence. There was a significant correlation between the readability of articles in two Mendeley and RG based on Spearman coefficient (correlation of 0.382 at 0.01 significance level) with a positive and average correlation. Conclusion: It was concluded that altmetric can be used as a complementary indicator beside traditional indices. Mendeley is an appropriate tool to evaluate the research work of scholars, universities and institutes and countries. Originality/Value: For the first time, correlation is measured between the articles’ citations in Web of Science (WoS) and the readership rate in Mendeley and ResearchGate (RG). The results of this research clear the value of academic social networks in the dissemination of scientific productions. These networks can increase the use of authentic scientific works. The results of this study encourage scientists to share their scientific productions on these networks.