IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/infome/v10y2016i1p162-173.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A comprehensive examination of the relation of three citation-based journal metrics to expert judgment of journal quality

Author

Listed:
  • Haddawy, Peter
  • Hassan, Saeed-Ul
  • Asghar, Awais
  • Amin, Sarah

Abstract

The academic and research policy communities have seen a long debate concerning the merits of peer review and quantitative citation-based metrics in evaluation of research. Some have called for replacing peer review with use of metrics for some evaluation purposes, while others have called for the use peer review informed by metrics. Whatever one's position, a key question is the extent to which peer review and quantitative metrics agree. In this paper we study the relation between the three journal metrics source normalized impact per paper (SNIP), raw impact per paper (RIP) and Journal Impact Factor (JIF) and human expert judgement. Using the journal rating system produced by the Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) exercise, we examine the relationship over a set of more than 10,000 journals categorized into 27 subject areas. We analyze the relationship from the dimensions of correlation, distribution of the metrics over the rating tiers, and ROC analysis. Our results show that SNIP consistently has stronger agreement with the ERA rating, followed by RIP and then JIF along every dimension measured. The fact that SNIP has a stronger agreement than RIP demonstrates clearly that the increase in agreement is due to SNIP's database citation potential normalization factor. Our results suggest that SNIP may be a better choice than RIP or JIF in evaluation of journal quality in situations where agreement with expert judgment is an important consideration.

Suggested Citation

  • Haddawy, Peter & Hassan, Saeed-Ul & Asghar, Awais & Amin, Sarah, 2016. "A comprehensive examination of the relation of three citation-based journal metrics to expert judgment of journal quality," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 10(1), pages 162-173.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:infome:v:10:y:2016:i:1:p:162-173
    DOI: 10.1016/j.joi.2015.12.005
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1751157715301164
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.joi.2015.12.005?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
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Bertocchi, Graziella & Gambardella, Alfonso & Jappelli, Tullio & Nappi, Carmela A. & Peracchi, Franco, 2015. "Bibliometric evaluation vs. informed peer review: Evidence from Italy," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 44(2), pages 451-466.
    2. Moed, Henk F., 2010. "Measuring contextual citation impact of scientific journals," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 4(3), pages 265-277.
    3. Serenko, Alexander & Dohan, Michael, 2011. "Comparing the expert survey and citation impact journal ranking methods: Example from the field of Artificial Intelligence," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 5(4), pages 629-648.
    4. Martin, Ben R. & Irvine, John, 1993. "Assessing basic research : Some partial indicators of scientific progress in radio astronomy," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 22(2), pages 106-106, April.
    5. Ben R Martin, 2011. "The Research Excellence Framework and the ‘impact agenda’: are we creating a Frankenstein monster?," Research Evaluation, Oxford University Press, vol. 20(3), pages 247-254, September.
    6. Ahlgren, Per & Waltman, Ludo, 2014. "The correlation between citation-based and expert-based assessments of publication channels: SNIP and SJR vs. Norwegian quality assessments," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 8(4), pages 985-996.
    7. Vanclay, Jerome K., 2011. "An evaluation of the Australian Research Council's journal ranking," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 5(2), pages 265-274.
    8. Henk F Moed, 2007. "The future of research evaluation rests with an intelligent combination of advanced metrics and transparent peer review," Science and Public Policy, Oxford University Press, vol. 34(8), pages 575-583, October.
    9. 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.
    10. 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.
    11. Dag W Aksnes & Randi Elisabeth Taxt, 2004. "Peer reviews and bibliometric indicators: a comparative study at a Norwegian university," Research Evaluation, Oxford University Press, vol. 13(1), pages 33-41, April.
    12. Gaby Haddow & Paul Genoni, 2010. "Citation analysis and peer ranking of Australian social science journals," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 85(2), pages 471-487, 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. Raminta Pranckutė, 2021. "Web of Science (WoS) and Scopus: The Titans of Bibliographic Information in Today’s Academic World," Publications, MDPI, vol. 9(1), pages 1-59, March.
    2. William H. Walters & Susanne Markgren, 2019. "Do faculty journal selections correspond to objective indicators of citation impact? Results for 20 academic departments at Manhattan College," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 118(1), pages 321-337, January.
    3. Guoliang Lyu & Ganwei Shi, 2019. "On an approach to boosting a journal’s citation potential," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 120(3), pages 1387-1409, September.
    4. Domingo Docampo & Vicente Safón, 2021. "Journal ratings: a paper affiliation methodology," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(9), pages 8063-8090, September.
    5. Currie, Russell R. & Pandher, Gurupdesh S., 2020. "Finance journal rankings: Active scholar assessment revisited," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 111(C).
    6. Andrea Bonaccorsi & Tindaro Cicero & Peter Haddawy & Saeed-UL Hassan, 2017. "Explaining the transatlantic gap in research excellence," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 110(1), pages 217-241, January.
    7. Emanuel Kulczycki & Ewa A. Rozkosz, 2017. "Does an expert-based evaluation allow us to go beyond the Impact Factor? Experiences from building a ranking of national journals in Poland," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 111(1), pages 417-442, April.
    8. Thelwall, Mike & Kousha, Kayvan & Stuart, Emma & Makita, Meiko & Abdoli, Mahshid & Wilson, Paul & Levitt, Jonathan, 2023. "Do bibliometrics introduce gender, institutional or interdisciplinary biases into research evaluations?," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 52(8).
    9. Bonaccorsi, Andrea & Haddawy, Peter & Cicero, Tindaro & Hassan, Saeed-Ul, 2017. "The solitude of stars. An analysis of the distributed excellence model of European universities," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 11(2), pages 435-454.
    10. Kong, Ling & Wang, Dongbo, 2020. "Comparison of citations and attention of cover and non-cover papers," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 14(4).
    11. Dmitry M. Kochetkov, 2018. "A Correlation Analysis of Normalized Indicators of Citation," Publications, MDPI, vol. 6(3), pages 1-9, September.
    12. Bornmann, Lutz & Tekles, Alexander, 2021. "Convergent validity of several indicators measuring disruptiveness with milestone assignments to physics papers by experts," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 15(3).
    13. Haddawy, Peter & Hassan, Saeed-Ul & Abbey, Craig W. & Lee, Inn Beng, 2017. "Uncovering fine-grained research excellence: The global research benchmarking system," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 11(2), pages 389-406.
    14. Zhang, Baolong & Wang, Hao & Deng, Sanhong & Su, Xinning, 2020. "Measurement and analysis of Chinese journal discriminative capacity," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 14(1).
    15. Walters, William H., 2017. "Do subjective journal ratings represent whole journals or typical articles? Unweighted or weighted citation impact?," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 11(3), pages 730-744.
    16. Mike Thelwall & Kayvan Kousha & Meiko Makita & Mahshid Abdoli & Emma Stuart & Paul Wilson & Jonathan Levitt, 2023. "In which fields do higher impact journals publish higher quality articles?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 128(7), pages 3915-3933, July.
    17. Saarela, Mirka & Kärkkäinen, Tommi, 2020. "Can we automate expert-based journal rankings? Analysis of the Finnish publication indicator," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 14(2).
    18. Anwar Said & Timothy D. Bowman & Rabeeh Ayaz Abbasi & Naif Radi Aljohani & Saeed-Ul Hassan & Raheel Nawaz, 2019. "Mining network-level properties of Twitter altmetrics data," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 120(1), pages 217-235, July.
    19. Johan Lyhagen & Per Ahlgren, 2020. "Uncertainty and the ranking of economics journals," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 125(3), pages 2545-2560, 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. Walters, William H., 2017. "Do subjective journal ratings represent whole journals or typical articles? Unweighted or weighted citation impact?," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 11(3), pages 730-744.
    2. Waltman, Ludo, 2016. "A review of the literature on citation impact indicators," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 10(2), pages 365-391.
    3. Ahlgren, Per & Waltman, Ludo, 2014. "The correlation between citation-based and expert-based assessments of publication channels: SNIP and SJR vs. Norwegian quality assessments," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 8(4), pages 985-996.
    4. 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.
    5. 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.
    6. Saarela, Mirka & Kärkkäinen, Tommi & Lahtonen, Tommi & Rossi, Tuomo, 2016. "Expert-based versus citation-based ranking of scholarly and scientific publication channels," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 10(3), pages 693-718.
    7. A. Ferrer-Sapena & E. A. Sánchez-Pérez & L. M. González & F. Peset & R. Aleixandre-Benavent, 2015. "Mathematical properties of weighted impact factors based on measures of prestige of the citing journals," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 105(3), pages 2089-2108, December.
    8. 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.
    9. B Ian Hutchins & Xin Yuan & James M Anderson & George M Santangelo, 2016. "Relative Citation Ratio (RCR): A New Metric That Uses Citation Rates to Measure Influence at the Article Level," PLOS Biology, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(9), pages 1-25, September.
    10. 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.
    11. Emanuel Kulczycki & Ewa A. Rozkosz, 2017. "Does an expert-based evaluation allow us to go beyond the Impact Factor? Experiences from building a ranking of national journals in Poland," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 111(1), pages 417-442, April.
    12. Abramo, Giovanni, 2018. "Revisiting the scientometric conceptualization of impact and its measurement," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 12(3), pages 590-597.
    13. 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.
    14. Chen, Kuan-Ming & Jen, Tsung-Hau & Wu, Margaret, 2014. "Estimating the accuracies of journal impact factor through bootstrap," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 8(1), pages 181-196.
    15. Jerome K. Vanclay & Lutz Bornmann, 2012. "Metrics to evaluate research performance in academic institutions: a critique of ERA 2010 as applied in forestry and the indirect H2 index as a possible alternative," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 91(3), pages 751-771, June.
    16. Gouri Ginde & Snehanshu Saha & Archana Mathur & Sukrit Venkatagiri & Sujith Vadakkepat & Anand Narasimhamurthy & B. S. Daya Sagar, 2016. "ScientoBASE: a framework and model for computing scholastic indicators of non-local influence of journals via native data acquisition algorithms," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 108(3), pages 1479-1529, September.
    17. Liwei Cai & Jiahao Tian & Jiaying Liu & Xiaomei Bai & Ivan Lee & Xiangjie Kong & Feng Xia, 2019. "Scholarly impact assessment: a survey of citation weighting solutions," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 118(2), pages 453-478, February.
    18. 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.
    19. Wang, Xing & Zhang, Zhihui, 2020. "Improving the reliability of short-term citation impact indicators by taking into account the correlation between short- and long-term citation impact," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 14(2).
    20. 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.

    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:eee:infome:v:10:y:2016:i:1:p:162-173. 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: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/joi .

    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.