The Average Data Scientist is an Outlier Achiever in an Information Science Department

The aim of this study was to test whether data science and information science have similar or different publication and citation standards. In order to test this, we applied serpAPI to compare one hundred random Google Scholar data science profiles to their equivalents – one hundred information science profiles. The results indicate that: (a) The yearly average number of data scientist publications (15.70) was over three times higher than for information scientist (4.26). (b) The average citation per paper for data scientists (23.06) was over 4 times higher than the average for information scientists (5.70). (c) The total number of citations of papers published in 2021 for data scientists (334.54) was over 14 times higher than for information scientists (23.38). These results clearly indicate that when making academic career decisions, data scientists should be evaluated according to data science standards which are very different from information science standards.