Abstract The number of reads of and citations to publications of 30 scientists working in scientometrics, bibliometrics, informetrics, and altmetrics was studied. A new indicator: Information Impact Rate (IIR) is introduced that relates the number of reads (R) to the number of citations (C). Theoretically, depending on the measure of R and C, the IIR index may be higher or lower than or equal to unity. For most publications (73.24%) IIR = R/C > 1 was found. Readerships may express interest towards information in the corresponding publication whereas citations may be regarded as proof of impact . Although the Spearman correlation coefficient between reads and citations (rho = 0.82) was found significant, the number of reads does not seem appropriate to apply as an independent index for detecting long term impact of published information. The IIR = R/C index strongly depends also on the type of publication (article, preprint, technical report, book, book chapter, or conference paper) and publication and citation period selected. K-means (K = 8) clustering of articles (482) of a selected group of scientometricians was performed according to the IIR = R/C index. The data reveal that most articles (332; 68.89%) belong to cluster of R/C = 2.34. The studied scientometricians were separated into two groups: Price medallists (mean h -index = 53.47) and scientometricians nominated for the medal in 2025 (mean h -index = 37.00). For scientists with high h -index the mean IIR = R/C indicator was calculated as 6.74, whilst for those with lower h -index significantly higher mean R/C index (10.50) was found. One of the reasons for the difference is that scientometricians with higher h -index show relatively higher mean number of citations (55.91) compared to that with lower index (47.27), whereas the mean number of reads: 407.01 vs 517.69.
Péter Vinkler (Mon,) studied this question.