Google Scholar e índice h en biomedicina: la popularización de la evaluación bibliométrica

espanolEl objetivo de este articulo es hacer una revision de las caracteristicas, prestaciones y limitaciones de los nuevos productos de evaluacion cientifica derivados de Google Scholar, como son Google Scholar Metrics y Google Scholar Citations, y del indice h, el indicador bibliometrico adoptado como estandar por estos servicios. Asimismo se resena la potencialidad de esta nueva base de datos como fuente para estudios en biomedicina y se realiza una comparacion del indice h obtenido por las revistas e investigadores mas relevantes en el ambito de la medicina intensiva, a partir de los datos extraidos de Web of Science, Scopus y Google Scholar. Los resultados muestran que, pese a que los valores medios de indice h en Google Scholar son casi un 30% mas elevados que los obtenidos en Web of Science y en torno a un 15% mas altos que los recogidos por Scopus, no hay variaciones sustantivas en las clasificaciones generadas a partir de una u otra fuente de datos. Aunque existen algunos problemas tecnicos, se concluye que Google Scholar es una herramienta valida para los investigadores en ciencias de la salud, tanto a efectos de recuperacion de informacion como de cara a la extraccion de indicadores bibliometricos. EnglishThe aim of this study is to review the features, benefits and limitations of the new scientific evaluation products derived from Google Scholar, such as Google Scholar Metrics and Google Scholar Citations, as well as the h-index, which is the standard bibliometric indicator adopted by these services. The study also outlines the potential of this new database as a source for studies in Biomedicine, and compares the h-index obtained by the most relevant journals and researchers in the field of intensive care medicine, based on data extracted from the Web of Science, Scopus and Google Scholar. Results show that although the average h-index values in Google Scholar are almost 30% higher than those obtained in Web of Science, and about 15% higher than those collected by Scopus, there are no substantial changes in the rankings generated from one data source or the other. Despite some technical problems, it is concluded that Google Scholar is a valid tool for researchers in Health Sciences, both for purposes of information retrieval and for the computation of bibliometric indicators.

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