Presented at the 14th International Society for Scientometrics and Informetrics Conference held at Vienna on July 18, 2013

1. Library loan statistics as a proxy for
monograph selection in citation indexes
Most borrowed is most cited?
Authors: Á Cabezas-Clavijo, N Robinson-García, D Torres-Salinas, E
Jiménez-Contreras, T Mikulka, C Gumpenberger, A Wernisch & J Gorraiz

2. Foundations
I. Library statistics are an invaluable and underutilized
source of information for assessment purposes
II. Monographs are still influential; in some social sciences,
and especially in the arts and humanities, are the main
communication channel between scholars
III. No consensus about quantitative or bibliometric
methodologies to assess monographs’ impact

3. Price (1963) said:
“the amount of usage
provides a reasonable
measure of the
scientific importance
of a journal or a man’s
work”.

4. Background
Some attempts to shed light on monographs impact by
several approaches:
I. library holdings: data based on local online catalogues (Torres-
Salinas & Moed, 2009), union catalogues (White et al, 2009) or
WorldCat (Linmans 2010);
II. document delivery requests (Gorraiz & Schlögl, 2006);
III. publishers’ prestige (Giménez-Toledo, Tejada-Artigas & Mañana-
Rodríguez, 2012);
IV. book reviews (Zuccala & van Leeuwen, 2011).

5. Launch of Book Citation Index
I. Launch of BKCI opens new possibilities for assessing
monographs impact by bibliometric means
II. First approaches to BKCI ups and downs can be found at
Gorraiz et al, 2013; Leydesdorff & Felt, 2012; Torres-
Salinas et al, 2012; Torres-Salinas et al, 2013
III. Solid methodologies must be developed to ensure that the
materials to be included in the future are chosen fairly
IV. “there is a need to select those publications that will most
likely contain significant scholarship” (Testa, 2012)

6. Goal
• To test the feasibility of using library loans as
a possible selection criterion for monographs
in citation indexes.
This is as a relevant issue since the content
of these indexes is used as primary source
for evaluation purposes.

7. Data & Methods
• Pilot study in two non-English-speaking European
university libraries: the library of the University of
Granada (Spanish-speaking) and the Vienna University
Library (German-speaking).
• Both libraries are universal with strong social sciences
and humanities components.
• Data were gathered from the Universities of Vienna and
Granada library systems in December 2012 regarding
loans from, respectively, 2001 and 2000 onwards

8. Data & Methods (II)
• 1000 most borrowed monographs by all types of users
were retrieved from both library systems
• For Vienna also “only scientists” loans were recorded
• Book types were coded as:
 REF = reference books, such as dictionaries, etc.
 MTB = manuals, textbooks, handbooks, etc.
 SM= scientific monographs
• For the first 100 most borrowed SM and MTB, citation
counts were gathered from Web of Science & from Google
Scholar

9. Results: Loans by type
•Results show a very similar number of scientific monographs in both
universities (20% vs. 24%) - all users -
•When regarding only scientists from the Vienna sample, the percentage of
SMs is almost 80%

10. Results (II): Loans by language
For only scientists in Vienna, the percentage of German titles decreases, and
English titles make up for almost one third.

11. Results (III): Top publishers
•Top publishers in both
samples are well known
international publishers -
or local branches - with a
strong teaching
component (McGraw Hill,
Prentice Hall, Masson)
•Also local publishers are
high in the loan rankings
(Tecnos, Facultas WUV) as
well as research oriented
publishers (Springer,
Síntesis)

12. Results (IV): Top publishers (only scientists)
Appearance of further
publishers, amongst them
foreign university press
companies
PUBLISHER TITLES LOANS % LOANS
LOANS/
TITLE
Suhrkamp 46 492 4.6 11
Böhlau 38 423 4.0 11
Oxbow Books 32 295 2.8 9
Manz 28 365 3.4 13
Cambridge
Univ. Press 26 253 2.4 10
Campus-Verl. 25 296 2.8 12
Springer 24 302 2.8 13
Oxford Univ.
Press 22 214 2.0 10
Beck 21 230 2.2 11
Routledge 20 216 2.0 11
Fink 20 203 1.9 10
Facultas.WUV 18 193 1.8 11
VS Verl. für
Sozialwiss. 15 145 1.4 10
Transcript 13 126 1.2 10
de Gruyter 11 110 1.0 10
Tempus 10 92 0.9 9
Metzler 10 118 1.1 12

13. Results (V): Loans & Citations for top 100
•Much higher number of loans for MTB books in both samples
•Median number of citations were higher for MTB in 3 out of 4 samples
•Just for GS citations in Vienna figures were higher for SM (12,5 vs 6 citations)
•Differences in loans and citations were statistically significant (CI=95%,
p<0.05) between MTB and SM

14. Results (VI): Correlations for citations & loans
•Granada: no correlation at all between loans and citations, regardless of the
citation source used and the type of monograph
•Vienna: A statistically significant but very weak correlation (0.310) between
loans and citations as measured by GS was detected for MTB books

15. Discussion
Not an easy process: many methodological decisions have to be taken:
I. publication year or acquisition year, extensions, loan times or loan
counts, differentiation of the user types and materials, different counts
in different libraries, multiple editions and copies,…?
II. measuring numbers of copies, editions or titles of monographs,
aggregating translations of the same monograph?
III. Difficult to detect citations referring to different books where the title
coincides in various languages. Usually handbooks and manuals have a
broad coverage, so the titles are very short (one or two words in many
cases), which makes it impossible to split citations for every language.

16. Discussion (II)
I. Most of the top books were manuals, handbooks and
textbooks, or reference books such as those for law and
dictionaries.
II. However, SM loans increase from 20-25% to 78% when
analysing loan patterns for scientists only.
III. This fact points to the need to differentiate between types
of users to assess more precisely the reliability of loans
as a usage indicator for monographs.

17. Discussion (III)
I. Within the most borrowed books, highly cited books coexist
with other monographs that are not noticed by the scientific
community.
II. Our study shows that also MTB are used and strongly cited by
scientists
III. Lack of correlation between loans and citations for top loaned
books
IV. The broad range of topics covered by books, the different
citation behaviours by discipline and the aging of books, are
further issues which may affect these results, along with the
aforementioned technical difficulties

18. Take-home messages
I. Loan statistics require improvement and standardization
(implementation of FRBR, RDA, ...) in order to be properly
used for bibliometric purposes.
II. A discipline-focused study could shed more light on the
validity of loans as a criterion for selecting monographs
in selective indexes than could a broad study.

19. Library loan statistics as a proxy for
monograph selection in citation indexes
Most borrowed is most cited?
Authors: Á Cabezas-Clavijo, N Robinson-García, D Torres-Salinas, E
Jiménez-Contreras, T Mikulka, C Gumpenberger, A Wernisch & J Gorraiz
Thank
you!