Correlation study between citation count and Mendeley readership of the articles of Sri Lankan authors

In this paper, the correlation of the citation count and Mendeley readership score of the articles by the Sri Lankan authors was studied. The study presents how the correlation exists among different Web of Science (WoS) subject categories and in different Mendeley user categories. Nine thousand one hundred thirty articles of Sri Lankan authors are collected from the WoS database, with a minimum of 5 citation counts, and analyzed to trace their correlation with Mendeley readership from different aspects. Quantitative methods were applied in the study. A strong correlation exists between the citation count and Mendeley readership. 'Chemistry', 'Public, Environmental & Occupational Health' and 'Engineering' were observed as the highly indexed subjects in the category-wise analysis, though it does not affect the readership and citation. Subjects with a higher Mendeley readership score strongly correlate with a citation in different user categories, and articles with less than 200 readership scores mostly tend to show a negative correlation. Mendeley is more prevalent among researchers, Ph.D. students and master's students than in other user categories, and in all the user categories, correlation is more or less favourable.

Automated summary

This study examines the correlation between citation count and Mendeley readership score for articles by Sri Lankan authors. The findings show a strong correlation between the two variables. The subject categories of 'Chemistry', 'Public, Environmental & Occupational Health', and 'Engineering' were identified as highly indexed. Articles with higher Mendeley readership scores are more likely to have higher citation counts, while articles with lower readership scores tend to have a negative correlation. Mendeley is most commonly used by researchers, Ph.D. students, and master's students.