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Firm‐like behavior of journals? Scaling properties of their output and impact growth dynamics

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  • Frank Havemann
  • Michael Heinz
  • Roland Wagner‐Döbler

Abstract

In the study of growth dynamics of artificial and natural systems, the scaling properties of fluctuations can exhibit information on the underlying processes responsible for the observed macroscopic behavior according to H.E. Stanley and colleagues (Lee, Amaral, Canning, Meyer, & Stanley, 1998; Plerou, Amaral, Gopikrishnan, Meyer, & Stanley, 1999; Stanley et al., 1996). With such an approach, they examined the growth dynamics of firms, of national economies, and of university research fundings and paper output. We investigated the scaling properties of journal output and impact according to the Journal Citation Reports (JCR; ISI, Philadelphia, PA) and find distributions of paper output and of citations near to lognormality. Growth rate distributions are near to Laplace “tents,” however with a better fit to Subbotin distributions. The width of fluctuations decays with size according to a power law. The form of growth rate distributions seems not to depend on journal size, and conditional probability densities of the growth rates can thus be scaled onto one graph. To some extent even quantitatively, all our results are in agreement with the observations of Stanley and others. Further on, a Matthew effect of journal citations is confirmed. If journals “behave” like business firms, a better understanding of Bradford's Law as a result of competition among publishing houses, journals, and topics suggests itself.

Suggested Citation

  • Frank Havemann & Michael Heinz & Roland Wagner‐Döbler, 2005. "Firm‐like behavior of journals? Scaling properties of their output and impact growth dynamics," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 56(1), pages 3-12, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:jamist:v:56:y:2005:i:1:p:3-12
    DOI: 10.1002/asi.20090
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    Cited by:

    1. Kosyakov, Denis & Pislyakov, Vladimir, 2024. "“I'd like to publish in Q1, but there's no Q1 to be found”: Study of journal quartile distributions across subject categories and topics," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 18(1).
    2. Matteo Migheli & Giovanni Battista Ramello, 2018. "The market of academic attention," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 114(1), pages 113-133, January.
    3. Alves, Luiz G.A. & Ribeiro, Haroldo V. & Mendes, Renio S., 2013. "Scaling laws in the dynamics of crime growth rate," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 392(11), pages 2672-2679.
    4. Sylvan Katz, 2005. "Indicators for Complex Innovation Systems," SPRU Working Paper Series 134, SPRU - Science Policy Research Unit, University of Sussex Business School.
    5. Calabrese, Armando & Capece, Guendalina & Costa, Roberta & Di Pillo, Francesca & Giuffrida, Stefania, 2018. "A ‘power law’ based method to reduce size-related bias in indicators of knowledge performance: An application to university research assessment," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 12(4), pages 1263-1281.

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