Historical Bibliometrics Using Google Scholar: The Case of Roman Law, 1727–2016

作     者：Janne Polonen Bjorn Hammarfelt 

作者机构：Federation of Finnish Learned SocietiesSnellmaninkatu 1300170 HelsinkiFinland Swedish School of Library and Information ScienceUniversity of BorasAllegatan 1Boras50332Sweden 

出 版 物：《Journal of Data and Information Science》 (数据与情报科学学报（英文版）)

年 卷 期：2020年第5卷第3期

页      面：18-32页

核心收录：

学科分类：050302[文学-传播学] 05[文学] 0503[文学-新闻传播学] 

主　　题：Historical bibliometrics Google Scholar Roman law 

摘      要：Purpose: The purpose of this study is to investigate the historical and linguistic coverage of Google Scholar, using publications in the field of Roman law as an ***/methodology/approach: To create a dataset of Roman law publications, we retrieved a total of 21,300 records of publications, published between years 1500 and 2016, with title including words denoting Roman law in English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish. Findings: We were able to find publications dating back to 1727. The largest number of publications and authors date to the late 19th century, and this peak might be explained by the role of Roman law in French legal education at the time. Furthermore, we found exceptionally skewed concentration of publications to authors, as well as of citations to publications. We speculate that this could be explained by the long time-frame of the study, and the importance of classic works. Research limitation: Major limitations, and potential future work, relate to data quality, and cleaning, disambiguation of publications and authors, as well as comparing coverage with other data sources. Practical implications: We find Google Scholar to be a promising data source for historical bibliometrics. This approach may help bridge the gap between bibliometrics and the digital humanities.Originality/value: Earlier studies have focused mainly on Google Scholar s coverage of publications and citations in general, or in specific fields. The historical coverage has, however, received less attention.