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Citation success index − An intuitive pair-wise journal comparison metric

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  • Milojević, Staša
  • Radicchi, Filippo
  • Bar-Ilan, Judit

Abstract

In this paper we present “citation success index”, a metric for comparing the citation capacity of pairs of journals. Citation success index is the probability that a random paper in one journal has more citations than a random paper in another journal (50% means the two journals do equally well). Unlike the journal impact factor (IF), the citation success index depends on the broadness and the shape of citation distributions. Furthermore, it is insensitive to sporadic highly-cited papers that affect the IF. Nevertheless, we show, based on 16,000 journals containing ∼2.4 million articles, that the citation success index is a relatively tight function of the ratio of IFs of journals being compared. This is due to the fact that journals with the same IF have quite similar citation distributions. The citation success index grows slowly as a function of IF ratio. It is substantial (>90%) only when the ratio of IFs exceeds ∼6, whereas a factor of two difference in IF values translates into a modest advantage for the journal with higher IF (index of ∼70%). We facilitate the wider adoption of this metric by providing an online calculator that takes as input parameters only the IFs of the pair of journals.

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  • Milojević, Staša & Radicchi, Filippo & Bar-Ilan, Judit, 2017. "Citation success index − An intuitive pair-wise journal comparison metric," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 11(1), pages 223-231.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:infome:v:11:y:2017:i:1:p:223-231
    DOI: 10.1016/j.joi.2016.12.006
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    Cited by:

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    2. 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.
    3. Xiomara S. Q. Chacon & Thiago C. Silva & Diego R. Amancio, 2020. "Comparing the impact of subfields in scientific journals," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 125(1), pages 625-639, October.
    4. Yurij L. Katchanov & Yulia V. Markova, 2017. "The “space of physics journals”: topological structure and the Journal Impact Factor," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 113(1), pages 313-333, October.
    5. Zhesi Shen & Liying Yang & Zengru Di & Jinshan Wu, 2019. "Large enough sample size to rank two groups of data reliably according to their means," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 118(2), pages 653-671, February.
    6. Brito, Ricardo & Rodríguez-Navarro, Alonso, 2019. "Evaluating research and researchers by the journal impact factor: Is it better than coin flipping?," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 13(1), pages 314-324.

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