IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/infome/v13y2019i1p270-290.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

On the interplay between normalisation, bias, and performance of paper impact metrics

Author

Listed:
  • Dunaiski, Marcel
  • Geldenhuys, Jaco
  • Visser, Willem

Abstract

We evaluate article-level metrics along two dimensions. Firstly, we analyse metrics’ ranking bias in terms of fields and time. Secondly, we evaluate their performance based on test data that consists of (1) papers that have won high-impact awards and (2) papers that have won prizes for outstanding quality. We consider different citation impact indicators and indirect ranking algorithms in combination with various normalisation approaches (mean-based, percentile-based, co-citation-based, and post hoc rescaling). We execute all experiments on two publication databases which use different field categorisation schemes (author-chosen concept categories and categories based on papers’ semantic information).

Suggested Citation

  • Dunaiski, Marcel & Geldenhuys, Jaco & Visser, Willem, 2019. "On the interplay between normalisation, bias, and performance of paper impact metrics," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 13(1), pages 270-290.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:infome:v:13:y:2019:i:1:p:270-290
    DOI: 10.1016/j.joi.2019.01.003
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1751157718304164
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.joi.2019.01.003?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. 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.
    2. 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 Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 62(7), pages 1370-1381, July.
    3. A Cecile J W Janssens & Michael Goodman & Kimberly R Powell & Marta Gwinn, 2017. "A critical evaluation of the algorithm behind the Relative Citation Ratio (RCR)," PLOS Biology, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(10), pages 1-5, October.
    4. Pedro Albarrán & Juan A. Crespo & Ignacio Ortuño & Javier Ruiz-Castillo, 2011. "The skewness of science in 219 sub-fields and a number of aggregates," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 88(2), pages 385-397, August.
    5. Mariani, Manuel Sebastian & Medo, Matúš & Zhang, Yi-Cheng, 2016. "Identification of milestone papers through time-balanced network centrality," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 10(4), pages 1207-1223.
    6. 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.
    7. Thed N. van Leeuwen & Clara Calero Medina, 2012. "Redefining the field of economics: Improving field normalization for the application of bibliometric techniques in the field of economics," Research Evaluation, Oxford University Press, vol. 21(1), pages 61-70, February.
    8. Sven E. Hug & Martin P. Brändle, 2017. "The coverage of Microsoft Academic: analyzing the publication output of a university," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 113(3), pages 1551-1571, December.
    9. Bornmann, Lutz & Marx, Werner, 2015. "Methods for the generation of normalized citation impact scores in bibliometrics: Which method best reflects the judgements of experts?," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 9(2), pages 408-418.
    10. Bornmann, Lutz & Leydesdorff, Loet & Mutz, Rüdiger, 2013. "The use of percentiles and percentile rank classes in the analysis of bibliometric data: Opportunities and limits," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 7(1), pages 158-165.
    11. Ludo Waltman & Nees Jan Eck & Thed N. Leeuwen & Martijn S. Visser & Anthony F. J. Raan, 2011. "Towards a new crown indicator: an empirical analysis," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 87(3), pages 467-481, June.
    12. Jonathan Adams & Karen Gurney & Louise Jackson, 2008. "Calibrating the zoom — a test of Zitt’s hypothesis," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 75(1), pages 81-95, April.
    13. Bornmann, Lutz & Marx, Werner, 2018. "Critical rationalism and the search for standard (field-normalized) indicators in bibliometrics," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 12(3), pages 598-604.
    14. 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.
    15. Neus Herranz & Javier Ruiz-Castillo, 2012. "Sub-field normalization in the multiplicative case: High- and low-impact citation indicators," Research Evaluation, Oxford University Press, vol. 21(2), pages 113-125, April.
    16. Smolinsky, Lawrence, 2016. "Expected number of citations and the crown indicator," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 10(1), pages 43-47.
    17. Anne-Wil Harzing & Satu Alakangas, 2017. "Microsoft Academic: is the phoenix getting wings?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 110(1), pages 371-383, January.
    18. Silva, F.N. & Rodrigues, F.A. & Oliveira, O.N. & da F. Costa, L., 2013. "Quantifying the interdisciplinarity of scientific journals and fields," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 7(2), pages 469-477.
    19. Dunaiski, Marcel & Visser, Willem & Geldenhuys, Jaco, 2016. "Evaluating paper and author ranking algorithms using impact and contribution awards," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 10(2), pages 392-407.
    20. John P A Ioannidis & Kevin Boyack & Paul F Wouters, 2016. "Citation Metrics: A Primer on How (Not) to Normalize," PLOS Biology, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(9), pages 1-7, September.
    21. Lundberg, Jonas, 2007. "Lifting the crown—citation z-score," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 1(2), pages 145-154.
    22. Lutz Bornmann & Rüdiger Mutz, 2015. "Growth rates of modern science: A bibliometric analysis based on the number of publications and cited references," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 66(11), pages 2215-2222, November.
    23. 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.
    24. Dunaiski, Marcel & Geldenhuys, Jaco & Visser, Willem, 2018. "How to evaluate rankings of academic entities using test data," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 12(3), pages 631-655.
    25. 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.
    26. Parolo, Pietro Della Briotta & Pan, Raj Kumar & Ghosh, Rumi & Huberman, Bernardo A. & Kaski, Kimmo & Fortunato, Santo, 2015. "Attention decay in science," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 9(4), pages 734-745.
    27. Anne-Wil Harzing & Satu Alakangas, 2017. "Microsoft Academic is one year old: the Phoenix is ready to leave the nest," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 112(3), pages 1887-1894, September.
    28. 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.
    29. Ludo Waltman & Erjia Yan & Nees Jan Eck, 2011. "A recursive field-normalized bibliometric performance indicator: an application to the field of library and information science," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 89(1), pages 301-314, October.
    30. Chen, P. & Xie, H. & Maslov, S. & Redner, S., 2007. "Finding scientific gems with Google’s PageRank algorithm," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 1(1), pages 8-15.
    31. Sven E. Hug & Michael Ochsner & Martin P. Brändle, 2017. "Citation analysis with microsoft academic," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 111(1), pages 371-378, April.
    32. 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.
    33. Vaccario, Giacomo & Medo, Matúš & Wider, Nicolas & Mariani, Manuel Sebastian, 2017. "Quantifying and suppressing ranking bias in a large citation network," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 11(3), pages 766-782.
    34. 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.
    35. 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.
    36. Waltman, Ludo, 2016. "A review of the literature on citation impact indicators," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 10(2), pages 365-391.
    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. Xipeng Liu & Xinmiao Li, 2022. "Early Identification of Significant Patents Using Heterogeneous Applicant-Citation Networks Based on the Chinese Green Patent Data," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(21), pages 1-27, October.
    2. Xu, Shuqi & Mariani, Manuel Sebastian & Lü, Linyuan & Medo, Matúš, 2020. "Unbiased evaluation of ranking metrics reveals consistent performance in science and technology citation data," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 14(1).
    3. Wang, Jingjing & Xu, Shuqi & Mariani, Manuel S. & Lü, Linyuan, 2021. "The local structure of citation networks uncovers expert-selected milestone papers," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 15(4).

    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. 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.
    2. Vaccario, Giacomo & Medo, Matúš & Wider, Nicolas & Mariani, Manuel Sebastian, 2017. "Quantifying and suppressing ranking bias in a large citation network," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 11(3), pages 766-782.
    3. Waltman, Ludo, 2016. "A review of the literature on citation impact indicators," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 10(2), pages 365-391.
    4. 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.
    5. Xu, Shuqi & Mariani, Manuel Sebastian & Lü, Linyuan & Medo, Matúš, 2020. "Unbiased evaluation of ranking metrics reveals consistent performance in science and technology citation data," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 14(1).
    6. Yu Zhang & Min Wang & Morteza Saberi & Elizabeth Chang, 2022. "Analysing academic paper ranking algorithms using test data and benchmarks: an investigation," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(7), pages 4045-4074, July.
    7. 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.
    8. Liu, Meijun & Jaiswal, Ajay & Bu, Yi & Min, Chao & Yang, Sijie & Liu, Zhibo & Acuña, Daniel & Ding, Ying, 2022. "Team formation and team impact: The balance between team freshness and repeat collaboration," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 16(4).
    9. 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).
    10. Petersen, Alexander M. & Pan, Raj K. & Pammolli, Fabio & Fortunato, Santo, 2019. "Methods to account for citation inflation in research evaluation," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 48(7), pages 1855-1865.
    11. 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.
    12. 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.
    13. Bornmann, Lutz & Marx, Werner, 2018. "Critical rationalism and the search for standard (field-normalized) indicators in bibliometrics," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 12(3), pages 598-604.
    14. Janne-Tuomas Seppänen & Hanna Värri & Irene Ylönen, 2022. "Co-citation Percentile Rank and JYUcite: a new network-standardized output-level citation influence metric and its implementation using Dimensions API," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(6), pages 3523-3541, June.
    15. Bornmann, Lutz & Haunschild, Robin & Mutz, Rüdiger, 2020. "Should citations be field-normalized in evaluative bibliometrics? An empirical analysis based on propensity score matching," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 14(4).
    16. 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.
    17. T. S. Evans & N. Hopkins & B. S. Kaube, 2012. "Universality of performance indicators based on citation and reference counts," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 93(2), pages 473-495, November.
    18. Franceschini, Fiorenzo & Maisano, Domenico, 2014. "Sub-field normalization of the IEEE scientific journals based on their connection with Technical Societies," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 8(3), pages 508-533.
    19. Thelwall, Mike, 2018. "Dimensions: A competitor to Scopus and the Web of Science?," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 12(2), pages 430-435.
    20. 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.

    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:13:y:2019:i:1:p:270-290. 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.