IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/jamist/v64y2013i1p96-107.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

How can journal impact factors be normalized across fields of science? An assessment in terms of percentile ranks and fractional counts

Author

Listed:
  • Loet Leydesdorff
  • Ping Zhou
  • Lutz Bornmann

Abstract

Using the CD‐ROM version of the Science Citation Index 2010 (N = 3,705 journals), we study the (combined) effects of (a) fractional counting on the impact factor (IF) and (b) transformation of the skewed citation distributions into a distribution of 100 percentiles and six percentile rank classes (top‐1%, top‐5%, etc.). Do these approaches lead to field‐normalized impact measures for journals? In addition to the 2‐year IF (IF2), we consider the 5‐year IF (IF5), the respective numerators of these IFs, and the number of Total Cites, counted both as integers and fractionally. These various indicators are tested against the hypothesis that the classification of journals into 11 broad fields by PatentBoard/NSF (National Science Foundation) provides statistically significant between‐field effects. Using fractional counting the between‐field variance is reduced by 91.7% in the case of IF5, and by 79.2% in the case of IF2. However, the differences in citation counts are not significantly affected by fractional counting. These results accord with previous studies, but the longer citation window of a fractionally counted IF5 can lead to significant improvement in the normalization across fields.

Suggested Citation

  • Loet Leydesdorff & Ping Zhou & Lutz Bornmann, 2013. "How can journal impact factors be normalized across fields of science? An assessment in terms of percentile ranks and fractional counts," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 64(1), pages 96-107, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:jamist:v:64:y:2013:i:1:p:96-107
    DOI: 10.1002/asi.22765
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.22765
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1002/asi.22765?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Loet Leydesdorff & Lutz Bornmann & Rüdiger Mutz & Tobias Opthof, 2011. "Turning the tables on citation analysis one more time: Principles for comparing sets of documents," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 62(7), pages 1370-1381, July.
    2. Moed, Henk F., 2010. "Measuring contextual citation impact of scientific journals," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 4(3), pages 265-277.
    3. Loet Leydesdorff, 2008. "Caveats for the use of citation indicators in research and journal evaluations," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 59(2), pages 278-287, January.
    4. Ismael Rafols & Alan L. Porter & Loet Leydesdorff, 2010. "Science overlay maps: A new tool for research policy and library management," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 61(9), pages 1871-1887, September.
    5. White, Halbert, 1980. "A Heteroskedasticity-Consistent Covariance Matrix Estimator and a Direct Test for Heteroskedasticity," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 48(4), pages 817-838, May.
    6. Loet Leydesdorff & Tobias Opthof, 2010. "Scopus's source normalized impact per paper (SNIP) versus a journal impact factor based on fractional counting of citations," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 61(11), pages 2365-2369, November.
    7. Loet Leydesdorff & Lutz Bornmann, 2011. "How fractional counting of citations affects the impact factor: Normalization in terms of differences in citation potentials among fields of science," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 62(2), pages 217-229, February.
    8. Radicchi, Filippo & Castellano, Claudio, 2012. "Testing the fairness of citation indicators for comparison across scientific domains: The case of fractional citation counts," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 6(1), pages 121-130.
    9. Wolfgang Glänzel & András Schubert & Bart Thijs & Koenraad Debackere, 2011. "A priori vs. a posteriori normalisation of citation indicators. The case of journal ranking," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 87(2), pages 415-424, May.
    10. Ronald Rousseau, 2006. "Timelines in citation research," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 57(10), pages 1404-1405, August.
    11. Jonas Lundberg & Anette Fransson & Mats Brommels & John Sk?r & Inger Lundkvist, 2006. "Is it better or just the same? Article identification strategies impact bibliometric assessments," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 66(1), pages 183-197, January.
    12. Loet Leydesdorff, 2009. "How are new citation‐based journal indicators adding to the bibliometric toolbox?," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 60(7), pages 1327-1336, July.
    13. Benjamin M. Althouse & Jevin D. West & Carl T. Bergstrom & Theodore Bergstrom, 2009. "Differences in impact factor across fields and over time," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 60(1), pages 27-34, January.
    14. Ismael Rafols & Loet Leydesdorff, 2009. "Content‐based and algorithmic classifications of journals: Perspectives on the dynamics of scientific communication and indexer effects," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 60(9), pages 1823-1835, September.
    15. Ludo Waltman & Nees Jan van Eck & Anthony F. J. van Raan, 2012. "Universality of citation distributions revisited," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 63(1), pages 72-77, January.
    16. Beirlant, Jan & Glänzel, Wolfgang & Carbonez, An & Leemans, Herlinde, 2007. "Scoring research output using statistical quantile plotting," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 1(3), pages 185-192.
    17. Per O. Seglen, 1992. "The skewness of science," Journal of the American Society for Information Science, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 43(9), pages 628-638, October.
    18. Zhou, Ping & Leydesdorff, Loet, 2011. "Fractional counting of citations in research evaluation: A cross- and interdisciplinary assessment of the Tsinghua University in Beijing," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 5(3), pages 360-368.
    19. Loet Leydesdorff & Jung C. Shin, 2011. "How to evaluate universities in terms of their relative citation impacts: Fractional counting of citations and the normalization of differences among disciplines," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 62(6), pages 1146-1155, June.
    20. Michel Zitt & Henry Small, 2008. "Modifying the journal impact factor by fractional citation weighting: The audience factor," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 59(11), pages 1856-1860, September.
    21. Alexander I. Pudovkin & Eugene Garfield, 2002. "Algorithmic procedure for finding semantically related journals," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 53(13), pages 1113-1119, November.
    22. Allan P. O. Williams, 2006. "Impact of Strategies," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: The Rise of Cass Business School, chapter 13, pages 167-181, Palgrave Macmillan.
    23. Ludo Waltman & Nees Jan van Eck & Anthony F. J. van Raan, 2012. "Universality of citation distributions revisited," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 63(1), pages 72-77, January.
    24. Wolfgang Glänzel & András Schubert, 2003. "A new classification scheme of science fields and subfields designed for scientometric evaluation purposes," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 56(3), pages 357-367, March.
    25. Mark P. Carpenter & Francis Narin, 1973. "Clustering of scientific journals," Journal of the American Society for Information Science, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 24(6), pages 425-436, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Marcel Clermont & Johanna Krolak & Dirk Tunger, 2021. "Does the citation period have any effect on the informative value of selected citation indicators in research evaluations?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(2), pages 1019-1047, February.
    2. Bornmann, Lutz & Haunschild, Robin, 2016. "Normalization of Mendeley reader impact on the reader- and paper-side: A comparison of the mean discipline normalized reader score (MDNRS) with the mean normalized reader score (MNRS) and bare reader ," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 10(3), pages 776-788.
    3. Xiaojing Cai & Xiaozan Lyu & Ping Zhou, 2023. "The relationship between interdisciplinarity and citation impact—a novel perspective on citation accumulation," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 10(1), pages 1-12, December.
    4. Tove Faber Frandsen & Jeppe Nicolaisen, 2017. "Rejoinder: Noble prize effects in citation networks," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 68(12), pages 2844-2845, December.
    5. Bornmann, Lutz & Haunschild, Robin, 2016. "Citation score normalized by cited references (CSNCR): The introduction of a new citation impact indicator," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 10(3), pages 875-887.
    6. Waltman, Ludo, 2016. "A review of the literature on citation impact indicators," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 10(2), pages 365-391.
    7. M. Ryan Haley & M. Kevin McGee, 2023. "A flexible functional method for jointly valuing journal visibility and author citation count," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 128(6), pages 3337-3346, June.
    8. Bouyssou, Denis & Marchant, Thierry, 2016. "Ranking authors using fractional counting of citations: An axiomatic approach," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 10(1), pages 183-199.
    9. Waltman, Ludo & van Eck, Nees Jan, 2013. "A systematic empirical comparison of different approaches for normalizing citation impact indicators," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 7(4), pages 833-849.
    10. Haley, M. Ryan & McGee, M. Kevin, 2020. "Jointly valuing journal visibility and author citation count: An axiomatic approach," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 14(1).
    11. João Mateus Freitas Veneroso & Marlon Dias & Alberto Ueda & Sabir Ribas & Berthier Ribeiro-Neto & Nivio Ziviani & Edmundo Souza e Silva, 2019. "P-score: a reputation bibliographic index that complements citation counts," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 121(3), pages 1269-1291, December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Loet Leydesdorff, 2013. "An evaluation of impacts in “Nanoscience & nanotechnology”: steps towards standards for citation analysis," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 94(1), pages 35-55, January.
    2. Waltman, Ludo, 2016. "A review of the literature on citation impact indicators," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 10(2), pages 365-391.
    3. Mingers, John & Leydesdorff, Loet, 2015. "A review of theory and practice in scientometrics," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 246(1), pages 1-19.
    4. Loet Leydesdorff, 2012. "Alternatives to the journal impact factor: I3 and the top-10% (or top-25%?) of the most-highly cited papers," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 92(2), pages 355-365, August.
    5. Bouyssou, Denis & Marchant, Thierry, 2016. "Ranking authors using fractional counting of citations: An axiomatic approach," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 10(1), pages 183-199.
    6. Waltman, Ludo & van Eck, Nees Jan, 2013. "A systematic empirical comparison of different approaches for normalizing citation impact indicators," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 7(4), pages 833-849.
    7. Dorta-González, P. & Dorta-González, M.I., 2013. "Impact maturity times and citation time windows: The 2-year maximum journal impact factor," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 7(3), pages 593-602.
    8. Dorta-González, Pablo & Dorta-González, María Isabel & Santos-Peñate, Dolores Rosa & Suárez-Vega, Rafael, 2014. "Journal topic citation potential and between-field comparisons: The topic normalized impact factor," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 8(2), pages 406-418.
    9. P. Dorta-González & M. I. Dorta-González, 2013. "Comparing journals from different fields of science and social science through a JCR subject categories normalized impact factor," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 95(2), pages 645-672, May.
    10. Zhou, Ping & Leydesdorff, Loet, 2011. "Fractional counting of citations in research evaluation: A cross- and interdisciplinary assessment of the Tsinghua University in Beijing," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 5(3), pages 360-368.
    11. Ludo Waltman & Nees Jan Eck, 2013. "Source normalized indicators of citation impact: an overview of different approaches and an empirical comparison," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 96(3), pages 699-716, September.
    12. Loet Leydesdorff & Tobias Opthof, 2012. "A rejoinder on energy versus impact indicators," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 90(2), pages 745-748, February.
    13. Wolfgang Glänzel & Henk F. Moed, 2013. "Opinion paper: thoughts and facts on bibliometric indicators," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 96(1), pages 381-394, July.
    14. Tolga Yuret, 2018. "Author-weighted impact factor and reference return ratio: can we attain more equality among fields?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 116(3), pages 2097-2111, September.
    15. Henk F. Moed, 2016. "Comprehensive indicator comparisons intelligible to non-experts: the case of two SNIP versions," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 106(1), pages 51-65, January.
    16. Waltman, Ludo & van Eck, Nees Jan & van Leeuwen, Thed N. & Visser, Martijn S., 2013. "Some modifications to the SNIP journal impact indicator," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 7(2), pages 272-285.
    17. Mutz, Rüdiger & Daniel, Hans-Dieter, 2012. "Skewed citation distributions and bias factors: Solutions to two core problems with the journal impact factor," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 6(2), pages 169-176.
    18. Cristiano Varin & Manuela Cattelan & David Firth, 2016. "Statistical modelling of citation exchange between statistics journals," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 179(1), pages 1-63, January.
    19. Mingers, John & Yang, Liying, 2017. "Evaluating journal quality: A review of journal citation indicators and ranking in business and management," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 257(1), pages 323-337.
    20. Bornmann, Lutz & Haunschild, Robin, 2016. "Citation score normalized by cited references (CSNCR): The introduction of a new citation impact indicator," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 10(3), pages 875-887.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:jamist:v:64:y:2013:i:1:p:96-107. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.asis.org .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.