Evaluating the Association between Citation Counts and Mendeley Readership: A Case Study of Highly Cited Papers in E-Learning

Altmetric is an indicator which provides the attention for the publications on social media platforms. Mendeley is a free reference manager and an academic social network, through which altmetrics provides the readership counts on a various basis like demographic, geographic etc. The present study is carried out to evaluate the association between the citation counts and Mendeley readership by doing the case study of highly cited publications in E-Learning. In the digital era, the mode of learning is also shifted towards the digital platform, so the area E -learning is selected for the present study. The data were collected using Web of Science Core Collection (included SCI-Expanded, A&HCI, and SSCI) by selecting the top 25 highly cited publications in the area of E-Learning during 2012 - 2017. The study found that Mendeley Readership was higher as compared to citations received for the publications in both the year and the main reason for this is that it has a large coverage for measuring readership. One of the most important things of the Mendeley is that it does not provide statistics for zero readerships unlike the citations because if the publication does not have a single citation, the citation database shows that statistics also. The study also recommends that Mendeley readership counts can be used as complementary indicators for research evaluation.