Objective: the objective of this study was to examine the relationship between scientometrics indicators and bookmarking data in order to determine the applicability of bookmarking data in research evaluation and assessment of scientific impact. This study has conducted in levels of articles and document types in Information & Library Science in 2004 to 2012.
Methodology: This study is an applied research in term of objective, and the data gathering scheme is descriptive of correlation type with a citation analysis approach. The purposeful samples of this study are bookmarked articles. The data are gathered using social science citation index (SSCI), journal citation report (JCR), and CiteuLike ( the scientific social bookmarking site).
Findings: The statistical findings of this investigation indicate that there is a meaningful, weak and positive relationship between citation count and bookmark count. These findings also indicate that the research articles, review, and proceedings papers are bookmarked more frequently than other document types. Bookmarked articles compared with those unbookmarked have been shown higher mean citation generally as well as in the levels of document types and publication year.
Conclusion: The presence of correlation between citations and bookmarks implies that bookmarks can represent article's scientific impact. However, according to the weakness of this correlation, replacing these two indicators is not recommended the bookmarking data can be used as a supplementary metric in research evaluation and assessment of scientific impact. Bookmarked articles in comparison with those unbookmarked have been shown higher mean citation which reflect user's selectivity in article bookmarking and represent another aspect of altmetrics validity.