2,352 research outputs found
A systematic empirical comparison of different approaches for normalizing citation impact indicators
We address the question how citation-based bibliometric indicators can best
be normalized to ensure fair comparisons between publications from different
scientific fields and different years. In a systematic large-scale empirical
analysis, we compare a traditional normalization approach based on a field
classification system with three source normalization approaches. We pay
special attention to the selection of the publications included in the
analysis. Publications in national scientific journals, popular scientific
magazines, and trade magazines are not included. Unlike earlier studies, we use
algorithmically constructed classification systems to evaluate the different
normalization approaches. Our analysis shows that a source normalization
approach based on the recently introduced idea of fractional citation counting
does not perform well. Two other source normalization approaches generally
outperform the classification-system-based normalization approach that we
study. Our analysis therefore offers considerable support for the use of
source-normalized bibliometric indicators
A review of the literature on citation impact indicators
Citation impact indicators nowadays play an important role in research
evaluation, and consequently these indicators have received a lot of attention
in the bibliometric and scientometric literature. This paper provides an
in-depth review of the literature on citation impact indicators. First, an
overview is given of the literature on bibliographic databases that can be used
to calculate citation impact indicators (Web of Science, Scopus, and Google
Scholar). Next, selected topics in the literature on citation impact indicators
are reviewed in detail. The first topic is the selection of publications and
citations to be included in the calculation of citation impact indicators. The
second topic is the normalization of citation impact indicators, in particular
normalization for field differences. Counting methods for dealing with
co-authored publications are the third topic, and citation impact indicators
for journals are the last topic. The paper concludes by offering some
recommendations for future research
A Review of Theory and Practice in Scientometrics
Scientometrics is the study of the quantitative aspects of the process of science as a communication system. It is centrally, but not only, concerned with the analysis of citations in the academic literature. In recent years it has come to play a major role in the measurement and evaluation of research performance. In this review we consider: the historical development of scientometrics, sources of citation data, citation metrics and the âlaws" of scientometrics, normalisation, journal impact factors and other journal metrics, visualising and mapping science, evaluation and policy, and future developments
Altmetrics and societal impact measurements: Match or mismatch? A literature review
Can alternative metrics (altmetrics) data be used to measure societal impact? We wrote this literature overview of empirical studies in order to find an answer to this question. The overview includes two parts. The first part, âsocietal impact measurementsâ, explains possible methods and problems in measuring the societal impact of research, case studies for societal impact measurement, societal impact considerations at funding organizations, and the societal problems that should be solved by science. The second part of the review, âaltmetricsâ, addresses a major question in research evaluation, which is whether altmetrics are proper indicators for measuring the societal impact of research. In the second part we explain the data sources used for altmetrics studies and the importance of field-normalized indicators for impact measurements. This review indicates that it should be relevant for impact measurements to be oriented towards pressing societal problems. Case studies in which societal impact of certain pieces of research is explained seem to provide a legitimate method for measuring societal impact. In the use of altmetrics, field-specific differences should be considered by applying field normalization (in cross-field comparisons). Altmetrics data such as social media counts might mainly reflect the public interest and discussion of scholarly works rather than their societal impact. Altmetrics (Twitter data) might be especially fruitfully employed for research evaluation purposes, if they are used in the context of network approaches. Conclusions based on altmetrics data in research evaluation should be drawn with caution
Normalizing Google Scholar data for use in research evaluation
Peer reviewedPublisher PD
Journal Maps, Interactive Overlays, and the Measurement of Interdisciplinarity on the Basis of Scopus Data (1996-2012)
Using Scopus data, we construct a global map of science based on aggregated
journal-journal citations from 1996-2012 (N of journals = 20,554). This base
map enables users to overlay downloads from Scopus interactively. Using a
single year (e.g., 2012), results can be compared with mappings based on the
Journal Citation Reports at the Web-of-Science (N = 10,936). The Scopus maps
are more detailed at both the local and global levels because of their greater
coverage, including, for example, the arts and humanities. The base maps can be
interactively overlaid with journal distributions in sets downloaded from
Scopus, for example, for the purpose of portfolio analysis. Rao-Stirling
diversity can be used as a measure of interdisciplinarity in the sets under
study. Maps at the global and the local level, however, can be very different
because of the different levels of aggregation involved. Two journals, for
example, can both belong to the humanities in the global map, but participate
in different specialty structures locally. The base map and interactive tools
are available online (with instructions) at
http://www.leydesdorff.net/scopus_ovl.Comment: accepted for publication in the Journal of the Association for
Information Science and Technology (JASIST
Ranking authors using fractional counting of citations : an axiomatic approach
This paper analyzes from an axiomatic point of view a recent proposal for counting citations: the value of a citation given by a paper is inversely proportional to the total number of papers it cites. This way of fractionally counting citations was suggested as a possible way to normalize citation counts between fields of research having different citation cultures. It belongs to the âciting-sideâ approach to normalization. We focus on the properties characterizing this way of counting citations when it comes to ranking authors. Our analysis is conducted within a formal framework that is more complex but also more realistic than the one usually adopted in most axiomatic analyses of this kind
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