Do Mendeley reader counts reflect the scholarly impact of conference papers? An investigation of computer science and engineering

Counts of Mendeley readers may give useful evidence about the impact of published research. Although previous studies have found significant positive correlations between counts of Mendeley readers and citation counts for journal articles, it is not known if this is equally true for conference papers. To fill this gap, Mendeley readership data and Scopus citation counts were extracted for both journal articles and conference papers published in 2011 in four fields for which conferences are important: Computer Science Applications; Computer Software; Building and Construction Engineering; and Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering. Mendeley readership counts correlated moderately with citation counts for both journal articles and conference papers in Computer Science Applications and Computer Software. The correlations were much lower between Mendeley readers and citation counts for conference papers than for journal articles in Building & Construction Engineering and Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering. Hence, there seem to be disciplinary differences in the usefulness of Mendeley readership counts as impact indicators for conference papers, even between fields for which conferences are important.