The Useful Indicators for Using Scholastic and Research Programs

Abstract

Computer experts, programmers, and other researchers often make their software programs free and available online. The designers of these programs can tell if their programs make a valuable contribution within or outside academia using an appropriate indicator, such as the number of downloads. Accordingly, the number of downloads, citations and licenses for the software hosted in Google Web Engine Code and cited in Scopus repository are first counted; Then, the correlation of downloads with Web of Science citations is analyzed; and then distributions of both are compared, finally, popular software tags and licenses are identified. It has been found that downloads correlate positively and significantly with Scopas citations. However, the correlation is weak (0.3) because some programs have a large normal audience outside of academia. There is disagreement about the best licenses used with shared software, with no license selected by more than five projects. The most common language labels are JAVA with a percentage of 20%. Excluding general computing terms, the most common subject labels are Google with a percentage of 5%, security with the percentage of (3%) and important and basic information with the percentage of (3%). In Conclusion, the number of downloads can provide evidence of broader non-academic uses of the software programs. However, those that are not primarily designed for research but have been cited by academics can also attract many downloads. Generally speaking, the number of downloads can be used as an indicator of an academic value, depending on the purpose of the programs.