Bibliometric Indicators for Publishers: Data processing, indicators and interpretation

Abstract: Here we describe the Bibliometric Indicators for Publishers Project, an initiative undertaken by EC3Metrics SL for the analysis and development of indicators based on books and book chapters. Its goal is to study and analyze the publication and citation patterns of books and book chapters considering academic publishers as the unit of analysis. It aims at developing new methodologies and indicators that can better capture and define the research impact of publishers. It is an on-going project in which data sources and indicators are tested. We consider academic publishers as an analogy of journals, focusing on them as the unit of analysis. In this working paper we present the http://bipublishers.es website where all findings derived from the project are displayed. We describe the data retrieval and normalization process and we show the main results. A total 482,470 records have been retrieved and processed, identifying 342 publishers from which 254 have been analyzed. Then six indicators have been calculated for each publisher for four fields and 38 disciplines and displayed.