IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/infome/v10y2016i2p646-651.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A farewell to the MNCS and like size-independent indicators

Author

Listed:
  • Abramo, Giovanni
  • D’Angelo, Ciriaco Andrea

Abstract

The arguments presented demonstrate that the Mean Normalized Citation Score (MNCS) and other size-independent indicators based on the ratio to publications are not indicators of research performance. The article provides examples of the distortions when rankings by MNCS are compared to those based on indicators of productivity. The authors propose recommendations for the scientometric community to switch to ranking by research efficiency, instead of MNCS and other size-independent indicators.

Suggested Citation

  • Abramo, Giovanni & D’Angelo, Ciriaco Andrea, 2016. "A farewell to the MNCS and like size-independent indicators," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 10(2), pages 646-651.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:infome:v:10:y:2016:i:2:p:646-651
    DOI: 10.1016/j.joi.2016.04.006
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1751157716300955
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.joi.2016.04.006?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. Giovanni Abramo & Ciriaco Andrea D'Angelo & Flavia Di Costa, 2008. "Assessment of sectoral aggregation distortion in research productivity measurements," Research Evaluation, Oxford University Press, vol. 17(2), pages 111-121, June.
    2. Fairclough, Ruth & Thelwall, Mike, 2015. "More precise methods for national research citation impact comparisons," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 9(4), pages 895-906.
    3. Ruiz-Castillo, Javier & Waltman, Ludo, 2015. "Field-normalized citation impact indicators using algorithmically constructed classification systems of science," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 9(1), pages 102-117.
    4. Lundberg, Jonas, 2007. "Lifting the crown—citation z-score," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 1(2), pages 145-154.
    5. Abramo, Giovanni & D’Angelo, Ciriaco Andrea, 2015. "Ranking research institutions by the number of highly-cited articles per scientist," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 9(4), pages 915-923.
    6. Waltman, Ludo & van Eck, Nees Jan & van Leeuwen, Thed N. & Visser, Martijn S. & van Raan, Anthony F.J., 2011. "Towards a new crown indicator: Some theoretical considerations," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 5(1), pages 37-47.
    7. Opthof, Tobias & Leydesdorff, Loet, 2010. "Caveats for the journal and field normalizations in the CWTS (“Leiden”) evaluations of research performance," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 4(3), pages 423-430.
    8. van Raan, Anthony F.J. & van Leeuwen, Thed N. & Visser, Martijn S. & van Eck, Nees Jan & Waltman, Ludo, 2010. "Rivals for the crown: Reply to Opthof and Leydesdorff," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 4(3), pages 431-435.
    9. Vinkler, Péter, 2012. "The case of scientometricians with the “absolute relative” impact indicator," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 6(2), pages 254-264.
    10. Michel Zitt & Suzy Ramanana-Rahary & Elise Bassecoulard, 2005. "Relativity of citation performance and excellence measures: From cross-field to cross-scale effects of field-normalisation," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 63(2), pages 373-401, April.
    11. Wolfgang Glänzel & Bart Thijs & Koenraad Debackere, 2014. "The application of citation-based performance classes to the disciplinary and multidisciplinary assessment in national comparison and institutional research assessment," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 101(2), pages 939-952, November.
    12. Alonso, S. & Cabrerizo, F.J. & Herrera-Viedma, E. & Herrera, F., 2009. "h-Index: A review focused in its variants, computation and standardization for different scientific fields," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 3(4), pages 273-289.
    13. Giovanni Abramo & Ciriaco Andrea D'Angelo & Fulvio Viel, 2013. "Assessing the accuracy of the h- and g-indexes for measuring researchers' productivity," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 64(6), pages 1224-1234, June.
    14. Larivière, Vincent & Gingras, Yves, 2011. "Averages of ratios vs. ratios of averages: An empirical analysis of four levels of aggregation," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 5(3), pages 392-399.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Waltman, Ludo, 2016. "A review of the literature on citation impact indicators," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 10(2), pages 365-391.
    2. Dunaiski, Marcel & Geldenhuys, Jaco & Visser, Willem, 2019. "Globalised vs averaged: Bias and ranking performance on the author level," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 13(1), pages 299-313.
    3. 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.
    4. Abramo, Giovanni & D’Angelo, Ciriaco Andrea, 2016. "A comparison of university performance scores and ranks by MNCS and FSS," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 10(4), pages 889-901.
    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. Rons, Nadine, 2012. "Partition-based Field Normalization: An approach to highly specialized publication records," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 6(1), pages 1-10.
    7. Thelwall, Mike, 2017. "Three practical field normalised alternative indicator formulae for research evaluation," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 11(1), pages 128-151.
    8. Zhihui Zhang & Ying Cheng & Nian Cai Liu, 2014. "Comparison of the effect of mean-based method and z-score for field normalization of citations at the level of Web of Science subject categories," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 101(3), pages 1679-1693, December.
    9. Schneider, Jesper W., 2013. "Caveats for using statistical significance tests in research assessments," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 7(1), pages 50-62.
    10. Vinkler, Péter, 2012. "The case of scientometricians with the “absolute relative” impact indicator," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 6(2), pages 254-264.
    11. Abramo, Giovanni & D’Angelo, Ciriaco Andrea & Rosati, Francesco, 2013. "The importance of accounting for the number of co-authors and their order when assessing research performance at the individual level in the life sciences," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 7(1), pages 198-208.
    12. Larivière, Vincent & Gingras, Yves, 2011. "Averages of ratios vs. ratios of averages: An empirical analysis of four levels of aggregation," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 5(3), pages 392-399.
    13. Lutz Bornmann & Alexander Tekles & Loet Leydesdorff, 2019. "How well does I3 perform for impact measurement compared to other bibliometric indicators? The convergent validity of several (field-normalized) indicators," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 119(2), pages 1187-1205, May.
    14. 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.
    15. Herranz, Neus & Ruiz-Castillo, Javier, 2012. "Sub-field normalization in the multiplicative case: Average-based citation indicators," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 6(4), pages 543-556.
    16. Wu, Jiang, 2013. "Investigating the universal distributions of normalized indicators and developing field-independent index," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 7(1), pages 63-71.
    17. Smolinsky, Lawrence, 2016. "Expected number of citations and the crown indicator," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 10(1), pages 43-47.
    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. Colliander, Cristian & Ahlgren, Per, 2011. "The effects and their stability of field normalization baseline on relative performance with respect to citation impact: A case study of 20 natural science departments," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 5(1), pages 101-113.
    20. 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.

    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:2:p:646-651. 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.