Professor Mike Thelwall

BSc (Lancaster), PhD (Lancaster)

Information School

Professor of Data Science

Mike Thelwall
Profile picture of Mike Thelwall
m.a.thelwall@sheffield.ac.uk

Full contact details

Professor Mike Thelwall
Information School
Room C225
The Wave
2 Whitham Road
Sheffield
S10 2AH
Profile

I previously worked at the University of Wolverhampton in 1989-2023 where I taught mathematics and statistics and researched educational technology before switching (by mistake, it’s an embarrassing story) to library and information science with a focus on web indicators for research evaluation (webometrics). I founded the Statistical Cybermetrics and Research Evaluation Group in 2000 to research bibliometrics and altmetrics/webometrics, which I led until moving to Sheffield. I was particularly proud that the group’s Research Excellence Framework 2014 submission had a grade point average above the institution-wide average of all UK universities (3.37). The group was part of the Research Institute for Information and Language Processing with the Research Group in Computational Linguistics, and I chaired its Student Management Board. I have supervised 22 PhD students to completion in bibliometrics and sentiment analysis. My work has been cited 48,000 times and in 2015 I received the de Solla Price Medal for scientometrics.

I have collaborated on many international multidisciplinary research projects and have worked on external contracts applying innovative bibliometrics for various external organisations, including the United Nations Development Programme, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, the Belgian government, Nesta (UK), UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), and Jisc. I was part of the Metric Tide group that evaluated the role of bibliometrics in the Research Excellence Framework and now sit on the UK Forum for Responsible Research Metrics. In 2022 I led a team assessing whether artificial intelligence could play a role in future research assessment in the UK.

Research interests

My core research area is bibliometrics, also known as scientometrics, using primarily quantitative methods to investigate research processes or impacts. Although researching many aspects of this field, I have partly specialised in alternative indicators for research evaluation, known as altmetrics.

I have also researched sentiment analysis in the past, developing the widely used software SentiStrength, which was used by Yahoo! and other companies as well as some digital artists. SentiStrength has been used in several high-profile digital art light installations including on the London Eye during the London Olympics, and on the Empire State Building during the Super Bowl.

An important parallel and ongoing aspect of my research is developing social science research methods and applying them to a wide range of social science and humanities fields. My research is often interdisciplinary, and I collaborate with scholars in diverse fields from complexity science to Victorian studies. Themes in my research include web-based data collection, methods development and evaluation, gender analysis, research evaluation, and research on research. I see my core strengths as combining programming skills with quantitative-led mixed methods and a curiosity about current research topics and social development.

Key research outputs include software SentiStrength (sentiment analysis), Mozdeh (social media analysis), and Webometric Analysis (scientometric and altmetric data collection and analysis) and numerous specific findings and inventions, such as the Mean Normalised Log-transformed Citation Score (MNLCS) for fair and precise estimates of average citation impact. From a methods perspective, I am particularly proud of, “I’m nervous about sharing this secret with you: YouTube influencers generate strong parasocial interactions by discussing personal issues” and “Predicting article quality scores with machine learning: The UK Research Excellence Framework”.

I would be happy to supervise PhDs in any area of bibliometrics or research evaluation as well as social media analysis topics with an emphasis on methods or large-scale data. I would also be happy to supervise broader data science projects with information science goals.

Mike's software and data is available at the following locations:
SentiStrength: here and here 
Mozdeh: here and here 
Webometric Analyst: here and here 
SocSciBot: here  and here 
AI for research evaluation: here 
Research data: here 

Publications

Books

Journal articles

Chapters

Conference proceedings papers

  • Thelwall M (2022) Can AI-estimated article quality be used to rank scholarly documents?. CEUR Workshop Proceedings, Vol. 3230 (pp 10-12) RIS download Bibtex download
  • Thelwall M (2022) Word Association Thematic Analysis: Insight Discovery from the Social Web. Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Web Information Systems and Technologies, 25 October 2022 - 27 October 2022. RIS download Bibtex download
  • Bickley MS, Kousha K & Thelwall M (2021) A systematic method for identifying references to academic research in grey literature. 18th International Conference on Scientometrics and Informetrics, ISSI 2021 (pp 121-132) RIS download Bibtex download
  • Thelwall M (2020) Why we need another ten years of bibliometric-enhanced information retrieval. CEUR Workshop Proceedings, Vol. 2591 (pp 114-115) RIS download Bibtex download
  • Shahmandi M, Wilson P & Thelwall M (2019) A new algorithm for zero-modified models applied to citation counts. 17th International Conference on Scientometrics and Informetrics, ISSI 2019 - Proceedings, Vol. 1 (pp 1020-1031) RIS download Bibtex download
  • Khan N, Thelwall M & Kousha K (2019) Data citation and reuse practice in biodiversity - Challenges of adopting a standard citation model. 17th International Conference on Scientometrics and Informetrics, ISSI 2019 - Proceedings, Vol. 1 (pp 1220-1225) RIS download Bibtex download
  • Bickley MS, Kousha K & Thelwall M (2019) Can the impact of grey literature be assessed? An investigation of UK government publications cited by articles and books. 17th International Conference on Scientometrics and Informetrics, ISSI 2019 - Proceedings, Vol. 2 (pp 1801-1812) RIS download Bibtex download
  • Gopalakrishna Pillai R, Thelwall M & Orasan C (2018) Detection of Stress and Relaxation Magnitudes for Tweets. Companion of the The Web Conference 2018 on The Web Conference 2018 - WWW '18, 23 April 2018 - 27 April 2018. RIS download Bibtex download
  • Pillai RG, Thelwall M & Orasan C (2018) What Makes You Stressed? Finding Reasons from Tweets. WASSA 2018 - 9th Workshop on Computational Approaches to Subjectivity, Sentiment and Social Media Analysis, Proceedings of the Workshop (pp 266-272) RIS download Bibtex download
  • Gopalakrishna Pillai R, Thelwall M & Orasan C (2018) Trouble on the Road: Finding Reasons for Commuter Stress from Tweets. Proceedings of the Workshop on Intelligent Interactive Systems and Language Generation (2IS&NLG), November 2018 - November 2018. RIS download Bibtex download
  • Gopalakrishna Pillai R, Thelwall M & Orasan C (2018) What Makes You Stressed? Finding Reasons From Tweets. Proceedings of the 9th Workshop on Computational Approaches to Subjectivity, Sentiment and Social Media Analysis, October 2018 - October 2018. RIS download Bibtex download
  • Levitt JM & Thelwall M (2016) The bibliometric behaviour of an expanding specialisation of medical research. 21ST INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY INDICATORS (STI 2016) (pp 453-460) RIS download Bibtex download
  • Aduku KJ, Thelwall M & Kousha K (2016) Do Mendeley reader counts reflect the scholarly impact of conference papers? An investigation of Computer Science and Engineering fields. 21ST INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY INDICATORS (STI 2016) (pp 1165-1172) RIS download Bibtex download
  • Kousha K & Thelwall M (2015) Alternative metrics for book impact assessment: Can choice reviews be a useful source?. Proceedings of ISSI 2015 Istanbul: 15th International Society of Scientometrics and Informetrics Conference (pp 59-70) RIS download Bibtex download
  • Low WJ, Wilson P & Thelwall M (2015) Stopped sum models for citation data. Proceedings of ISSI 2015 Istanbul: 15th International Society of Scientometrics and Informetrics Conference (pp 184-194) RIS download Bibtex download
  • Levitt JM & Thelwall M (2015) How often are patients interviewed in health research? An informetric approach. Proceedings of ISSI 2015 Istanbul: 15th International Society of Scientometrics and Informetrics Conference (pp 384-389) RIS download Bibtex download
  • Thelwall M (2015) Sentiment strength detection for social media text: Artificial agents, answer ranking and art installations. Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics), Vol. 9114 (pp XXI-XXII) RIS download Bibtex download
  • Ossenblok TLB & Thelwall M (2015) What's special about book editors? A bibliometric comparison of book editors and other flemish researchers in the social sciences and humanities. Proceedings of ISSI 2015 Istanbul: 15th International Society of Scientometrics and Informetrics Conference (pp 778-783) RIS download Bibtex download
  • Choloniewski J, Sienkiewicz J, Holyst J & Thelwall M (2015) The Role of Emotional Variables in the Classification and Prediction of Collective Social Dynamics. ACTA PHYSICA POLONICA A, Vol. 127(3A) (pp A21-A28) RIS download Bibtex download
  • Mas-Bleda A, Thelwall M, Kousha K & Aguillo IF (2013) European highly cited scientists' presence in the social web. Proceedings of ISSI 2013 - 14th International Society of Scientometrics and Informetrics Conference, Vol. 2 (pp 1966-1969) RIS download Bibtex download
  • Minguillo D & Thelwall M (2013) Industry research production and linkages with academia: Evidence from UK science parks. Proceedings of ISSI 2013 - 14th International Society of Scientometrics and Informetrics Conference, Vol. 1 (pp 985-1002) RIS download Bibtex download
  • Holmberg K & Thelwall M (2013) Disciplinary differences in twitter scholarly communication. Proceedings of ISSI 2013 - 14th International Society of Scientometrics and Informetrics Conference, Vol. 1 (pp 567-582) RIS download Bibtex download
  • Kousha K & Thelwall M (2013) Evaluating the web research dissemination of EU academics: A multidiscipline outlink analysis of online CVS. Proceedings of ISSI 2013 - 14th International Society of Scientometrics and Informetrics Conference, Vol. 1 (pp 705-719) RIS download Bibtex download
  • Mohammadi E & Thelwall M (2013) Assessing the mendeley readership of social sciences and humanities research. Proceedings of ISSI 2013 - 14th International Society of Scientometrics and Informetrics Conference, Vol. 1 (pp 200-214) RIS download Bibtex download
  • Shema H, Bar-Ilan J & Thelwall M (2013) Do blog citations correlate with a higher number of future citations? (RIP). Proceedings of ISSI 2013 - 14th International Society of Scientometrics and Informetrics Conference, Vol. 1 (pp 604-611) RIS download Bibtex download
  • Kenekayoro P, Buckley K & Thelwall M (2013) Motivation for hyperlink creation using inter-page relationships. Proceedings of ISSI 2013 - 14th International Society of Scientometrics and Informetrics Conference, Vol. 2 (pp 1253-1269) RIS download Bibtex download
  • Larivière V, Macaluso B, Sugimoto CR, Milojević S, Cronin B & Thelwall M (2013) The nuanced nature of e-print use: A case study of arXiv. Proceedings of ISSI 2013 - 14th International Society of Scientometrics and Informetrics Conference, Vol. 2 (pp 1321-1333) RIS download Bibtex download
  • Levitt JM & Thelwall M (2013) The relationship between collaboration and productivity for long-term information science researchers (rip). Proceedings of ISSI 2013 - 14th International Society of Scientometrics and Informetrics Conference, Vol. 2 (pp 1461-1468) RIS download Bibtex download
  • Didegah F, Thelwall M & Wilson P (2013) Which factors help to produce high impact research? A combined statistical modelling approach. Proceedings of ISSI 2013 - 14th International Society of Scientometrics and Informetrics Conference, Vol. 2 (pp 1830-1844) RIS download Bibtex download
  • Paltoglou G & Thelwall M (2013) More than bag-of-words: Sentence-based document representation for sentiment analysis. International Conference Recent Advances in Natural Language Processing, RANLP (pp 546-552) RIS download Bibtex download
  • Ponomareva N & Thelwall M (2013) Semi-supervised vs. cross-domain graphs for sentiment analysis. International Conference Recent Advances in Natural Language Processing, RANLP (pp 571-578) RIS download Bibtex download
  • Kenekayoro P, Buckley K & Thelwall M (2012) Fuzzy clustering of UK computer science departments. Proceedings of the IADIS International Conference Intelligent Systems and Agents 2012, ISA 2012, IADIS European Conference on Data Mining 2012, ECDM 2012 (pp 203-208) RIS download Bibtex download
  • Ponomareva N & Thelwall M (2012) Do neighbours help? an exploration of graph-based algorithms for cross-domain sentiment classification. EMNLP-CoNLL 2012 - 2012 Joint Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing and Computational Natural Language Learning, Proceedings of the Conference (pp 655-665) RIS download Bibtex download
  • Weronski P, Sienkiewicz J, Paltoglou G, Buckley K, Thelwall M & Holyst JA (2012) Emotional Analysis of Blogs and Forums Data. ACTA PHYSICA POLONICA A, Vol. 121(2) (pp B128-B132) RIS download Bibtex download
  • Gobron S, Ahn J, Silvestre Q, Thalmann D, Rank S, Skowron M, Paltoglou G & Thelwall M (2011) An interdisciplinary VR-architecture for 3D chatting with non-verbal communication. Joint Virtual Reality Conference of EGVE 2011 - The 17th Eurographics Symposium on Virtual Environments, EuroVR 2011 - The 8th EuroVR (INTUITION) Conference (pp 87-94) RIS download Bibtex download
  • Paltoglou G & Thelwall M (2011) University of wolverhampton at the TREC-2011 microblog track. NIST Special Publication RIS download Bibtex download
  • Kousha K & Thelwall M (2011) Assessing the citation impact of book-based disciplines: The role of Google Books, Google Scholar and Scopus. Proceedings of ISSI 2011 - 13th Conference of the International Society for Scientometrics and Informetrics, Vol. 1 (pp 361-372) RIS download Bibtex download
  • Minguillo D & Thelwall M (2011) The entrepreneurial role of the University: A link analysis of York Science Park. Proceedings of ISSI 2011 - 13th Conference of the International Society for Scientometrics and Informetrics, Vol. 2 (pp 570-583) RIS download Bibtex download
  • Levitt JM, Thelwall M & Levitt M (2011) To what extent does the citation advantage of collaboration depend on the citation counting system?. Proceedings of ISSI 2011 - 13th Conference of the International Society for Scientometrics and Informetrics, Vol. 1 (pp 398-408) RIS download Bibtex download
  • Li X, Thelwall M & Giustini D (2011) Validating online reference managers for scholarly impact measurement. Proceedings of ISSI 2011 - 13th Conference of the International Society for Scientometrics and Informetrics, Vol. 1 (pp 454-462) RIS download Bibtex download
  • Paltoglou G & Thelwall M (2010) A study of Information Retrieval weighting schemes for sentiment analysis. ACL 2010 - 48th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics, Proceedings of the Conference (pp 1386-1395) RIS download Bibtex download
  • Angus E & Thelwall M (2010) Motivations for image publishing and tagging on flickr. ELPUB 2010 - Publishing in the Networked World: Transforming the Nature of Communication, 14th International Conference on Electronic Publishing (pp 189-204) RIS download Bibtex download
  • Chibelushi C & Thelwall M (2010) Text mining decision elements from meeting transcripts. Lecture Notes in Electrical Engineering, Vol. 52 LNEE (pp 373-386) RIS download Bibtex download
  • Paltoglou G & Thelwall M (2010) A study of information retrieval weighting schemes for sentiment analysis. Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics, Vol. 2010-July (pp 1386-1395) RIS download Bibtex download
  • Paltoglou G, Thelwall M & Buckley K (2010) Online textual communications annotated with grades of emotion strength. LREC 2010 - SEVENTH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON LANGUAGE RESOURCES AND EVALUATION (pp J25-J31) RIS download Bibtex download
  • Cugelman B, Thelwall M & Dawes P (2009) Communication-based influence components model. Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Persuasive Technology RIS download Bibtex download
  • Kousha K & Thelwall M (2009) Google book search citation as impact indicator: A case study on information and library science journal articles. 12th International Conference on Scientometrics and Informetrics, ISSI 2009 (pp 218-229) RIS download Bibtex download
  • Levitt JM & Thelwall M (2009) Measuring the citation levels of subfields as delineated by keywords: Investigating economics articles in Scopus. 12th International Conference on Scientometrics and Informetrics, ISSI 2009 (pp 964-965) RIS download Bibtex download
  • Angus E, Stuart D & Thelwall M (2009) Flickr: An academic image resource?. 12th International Conference on Scientometrics and Informetrics, ISSI 2009 (pp 904-905) RIS download Bibtex download
  • Levitt JM, Thelwall M & Oppenheim C (2009) Is the higher citation of collaborative research the same in every country: A case study of economics. 12th International Conference on Scientometrics and Informetrics, ISSI 2009 (pp 759-763) RIS download Bibtex download
  • Greenaway S, Thelwall M & Ding Y (2009) Tagging YouTube - A classification of tagging practice on YouTube. 12th International Conference on Scientometrics and Informetrics, ISSI 2009 (pp 660-664) RIS download Bibtex download
  • Chibelushi C & Thelwall M (2009) Text Mining for Meeting Transcript Analysis to Extract Key Decision Elements. IMECS 2009: INTERNATIONAL MULTI-CONFERENCE OF ENGINEERS AND COMPUTER SCIENTISTS, VOLS I AND II (pp 710-715) RIS download Bibtex download
  • Thelwall M, Byrne A & Goody M (2007) Which types of news story attract bloggers?. Information Research, Vol. 12(4) RIS download Bibtex download
  • Levitt J & Thelwall M (2007) Atypical citation patterns in the twenty most highly cited documents in library and information science. Proceedings of ISSI 2007 - 11th International Conference of the International Society for Scientometrics and Informetrics (pp 485-488) RIS download Bibtex download
  • Cugelman B, Thelwall M & Dawes P (2007) Can Brotherhood Be Sold Like Soap...Online? An Online Social Marketing and Advocacy Pilot Study Synopsis (pp 144-147) RIS download Bibtex download
  • Levitt JM & Thelwall M (2007) Two new indicators derived from the h-index for comparing citation impact: Hirsch frequencies and the normalised hirsch index. Proceedings of ISSI 2007 - 11th International Conference of the International Society for Scientometrics and Informetrics (pp 876-877) RIS download Bibtex download
  • Holmberg K & Thelwall M (2007) Local government web sites in finland: A geographic and webometric analysis. Proceedings of ISSI 2007 - 11th International Conference of the International Society for Scientometrics and Informetrics (pp 378-386) RIS download Bibtex download
  • Stuart D & Thelwall M (2007) University-industry-government relationships manifested through MSN reciprocal links. Proceedings of ISSI 2007 - 11th International Conference of the International Society for Scientometrics and Informetrics (pp 731-735) RIS download Bibtex download
  • Angus E, Thelwall M & Stuart D (2007) University groups in flickr: Tagging for purpose or pleasure?. Proceedings of ISSI 2007 - 11th International Conference of the International Society for Scientometrics and Informetrics (pp 824-825) RIS download Bibtex download
  • Zuccala A & Thelwall M (2006) <bi>LexiURL</bi> web link analysis for digital libraries. Proceedings of the 6th ACM/IEEE-CS joint conference on Digital libraries RIS download Bibtex download
  • Thelwall M & Payne N (2005) Link analysis: An informetric technique. Proceedings of ISSI 2005: 10th International Conference of the International Society for Scientometrics and Informetrics, Vol. 2 (pp 681-682) RIS download Bibtex download
  • Kousha K & Thelwall M (2005) Motivations for URL citations to open access library and information science. Proceedings of ISSI 2005: 10th International Conference of the International Society for Scientometrics and Informetrics, Vol. 1 (pp 67-77) RIS download Bibtex download
  • Stuart D & Thelwall M (2005) What can university-to-government web links reveal about university - Government collaboration?. Proceedings of ISSI 2005: 10th International Conference of the International Society for Scientometrics and Informetrics, Vol. 1 (pp 188-192) RIS download Bibtex download
  • Smith AG & Thelwall M (2005) Web links as an indicator of research output: A comparison of NZ tertiary institution links with the performance based research funding assessment. Proceedings of ISSI 2005: 10th International Conference of the International Society for Scientometrics and Informetrics, Vol. 1 (pp 205-211) RIS download Bibtex download
  • Thelwall M & Wouters P (2005) What’s the Deal with the Web/Blogs/the Next Big Technology: A Key Role for Information Science in e-Social Science Research? (pp 187-199) RIS download Bibtex download
  • Smith A & Thelwall M (2001) Web impact factors and university research links. 8TH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON SCIENTOMETRICS AND INFORMETRICS, VOLS 1 AND 2 - ISSI-2001, PROCEEDINGS (pp 657-664) RIS download Bibtex download
  • Cugelman B, Thelwall M & Dawes P () Website Credibility, Active Trust and Behavioural Intent (pp 47-57) RIS download Bibtex download
  • Thelwall M () Vocabulary spectral analysis as an exploratory tool for scientific web intelligence. Proceedings. Eighth International Conference on Information Visualisation, 2004. IV 2004. RIS download Bibtex download

Preprints

Teaching activities

INF112 - Data Modelling and Storage

INF6024 - Researching Social Media

INF6050 - Database Design

Professional activities and memberships
  • Committee member: UK Forum for Responsible Research Metrics (UKRI) 2017-
  • Docent, Department of Information Studies, Åbo Akademi University, Finland.
  • Senior associate editor of Journal of the American Society for Information Science & Technology.
  • Member of the editorial boards of:
  • International Journal of Social Research Methodology (2022-)
  • Profesional de la Información (2022-)
  • Data Science and Informetrics (2020-)
  • Quantitative Science Studies (2019-)
  • Journal of Data Science (2015-)
  • Scientometrics (2007-)
  • Journal of Information Science (2006-)