Examining the relationship between academic book citations and Goodreads reader opinion and rating

Abstract

Although the traditional bibliometric citation database is an established academic impact assessment source, in this paper, we examine the role of social media impact on academic books. We identified the highly cited books in Scopus and compared the citations with ratings and reviews on the Goodreads website. R stat was used to extract the data from Goodreads website. We found that there is an uneven distribution of Goodreads rating and reviews. Social science books received the highest number of user’s ratings, reviews and citations. The study finds that there is no relationship between citation counts and Goodreads ratings and reviews count in social science books. Although social science books generated the highest number of studies and engagement by the readers, there seems to be no evidence to suggest that this engagement results in an academic citation. Whereas, a correlation was observed between health science books citations and Goodreads overall rating, as with physical science book reviews and Google Scholar citation counts.