Is Google Scholar useful for the evaluation of non‐English scientific journals? The case of Chinese journals

This study determined how useful Google Scholar (GS) is for the evaluation of non‐English journals based on a sample of 150 Chinese journals listed in the Report on Chinese Academic Journals Evaluation of Research Center for Chinese Science Evaluation (2013–2014). This study investigated two disciplines: Library, Information & Documentation Science and Metallurgical Engineering & Technology. We collected data from GS and the Chongqing VIP database to evaluate GS as a citation database for Chinese journals on its resource coverage, journal ranking, and citation data. We found that GS covered 100% of the sample journals but indexed 22% more article records than the number of articles published. The ranking of Chinese journals by GS Metrics was not suitable to present a dependable ranking of Chinese journals. GS appeared suitable to provide an alternative source of Chinese citation data, even though there existed coverage problems, including article duplication and citation omission and potential duplication. The GS Metric average citation provided results highly correlated to traditional citation results, showing that it would be suitable for evaluating Chinese journals.