Exploring the Composite Trace of Research Outputs of Humanities and Social Sciences Scholars: A Case Study of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences at National Taiwan University

In this study, we used the citation data from four databases (THCI, ACI, WOS and Scopus) and one social media, Mendeley, to examine the composite traces of humanities and social sciences scholars’ research outputs. Using the researchers of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences in National Taiwan University as subjects, this study compared how the scholars’ publications were cited in Taiwan’s and international academic journals as well as used in the social Web. It found that most of the subjects’ publications were in Chinese, and the impact of the publications was domestic rather than international. Taiwan’s citation databases, unsurprisingly, saw more citations to their research outputs. However, when only the English publications were observed, it was found that the citation performances in international databases and Mendeley were highly correlated. This suggests that Mendeley is a valid altmetric citation source for observing the international impact of Taiwan’s scholars.