Making sense of indices and impact numbers: Establishing leading EGOV scholars’ “Signatures”

Abstract

From its earliest stages on, scholars immersed in Electronic Government Research (EGR) have cared for the study domain’s reputation and academic standing. With the publication of “Forums for Electronic Government Scholars” a few years ago, it was established, which academic outlets in EGR (both journals and conferences) the most prolific and influential scholars in the domain preferred, and how these outlets were rated by the very same scholars. Based on sources such as the Electronic Government Reference Library (EGRL) and Google Scholar, various counts and indices have now become publicly available, which make possible to trace each EGR scholar’s productivity and impact at any point in time. However, quantitative citation counts and index numbers, while important, can be misleading for various reasons. This study presents a complementary approach to identify each leading EGR scholar’s “signature” and argues that citation numbers, indices, and signatures when taken together present a far more informative picture of scholarly impact and influence than citation and index numbers alone.