Astrophysics publications on arXiv, Scopus and Mendeley: a case study

In this study we examined a sample of 100 European astrophysicists and their publications indexed by the citation database Scopus, submitted to the arXiv repository and bookmarked by readers in the reference manager Mendeley. Although it is believed that astrophysicists use arXiv widely and extensively, the results show that on average more items are indexed by Scopus than submitted to arXiv. A considerable proportion of the items indexed by Scopus appear also on Mendeley, but on average the number of readers who bookmarked the item on Mendeley is much lower than the number of citations reported in Scopus. The comparisons between the data sources were done based on the authors and the titles of the publications.