Citation inequality and the Journal Impact Factor: median, mean, (does it) matter?
| العنوان: | Citation inequality and the Journal Impact Factor: median, mean, (does it) matter? |
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| المؤلفون: | Georg Zimmermann, Tobias Kiesslich, Andreas Traweger, Marlena Beyreis |
| المصدر: | Scientometrics. 126:1249-1269 |
| بيانات النشر: | Springer Science and Business Media LLC, 2020. |
| سنة النشر: | 2020 |
| مصطلحات موضوعية: | 0303 health sciences, Gini coefficient, Impact factor, Inequality, media_common.quotation_subject, General Social Sciences, 010501 environmental sciences, Library and Information Sciences, 01 natural sciences, Computer Science Applications, Journal ranking, 03 medical and health sciences, Ranking, Skewness, Citation distribution, Citation, 030304 developmental biology, 0105 earth and related environmental sciences, Demography, media_common, Mathematics |
| الوصف: | Skewed citation distribution is a major limitation of the Journal Impact Factor (JIF) representing an outlier-sensitive mean citation value per journal The present study focuses primarily on this phenomenon in the medical literature by investigating a total of n = 982 journals from two medical categories of the Journal Citation Report (JCR). In addition, the three highest-ranking journals from each JCR category were included in order to extend the analyses to non-medical journals. For the journals in these cohorts, the citation data (2018) of articles published in 2016 and 2017 classified as citable items (CI) were analysed using various descriptive approaches including e.g. the skewness, the Gini coefficient, and, the percentage of CI contributing 50% or 90% of the journal’s citations. All of these measures clearly indicated an unequal, skewed distribution with highly-cited articles as outliers. The %CI contributing 50% or 90% of the journal’s citations was in agreement with previously published studies with median values of 13–18% CI or 44–60% CI generating 50 or 90% of the journal’s citations, respectively. Replacing the mean citation values (corresponding to the JIF) with the median to represent the central tendency of the citation distributions resulted in markedly lower numerical values ranging from − 30 to − 50%. Up to 39% of journals showed a median citation number of zero in one medical journal category. For the two medical cohorts, median-based journal ranking was similar to mean-based ranking although the number of possible rank positions was reduced to 13. Correlation of mean citations with the measures of citation inequality indicated that the unequal distribution of citations per journal is more prominent and, thus, relevant for journals with lower citation rates. By using various indicators in parallel and the hitherto probably largest journal sample, the present study provides comprehensive up-to-date results on the prevalence, extent and consequences of citation inequality across medical and all-category journals listed in the JCR. |
| تدمد: | 1588-2861 0138-9130 |
| الوصول الحر: | https://explore.openaire.eu/search/publication?articleId=doi_________::03899ebaf84f50c7b164cbfb0056b350Test https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-020-03812-yTest |
| حقوق: | OPEN |
| رقم الانضمام: | edsair.doi...........03899ebaf84f50c7b164cbfb0056b350 |
| قاعدة البيانات: | OpenAIRE |
| تدمد: | 15882861 01389130 |
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