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Bibliographic coupling and hierarchical clustering for the validation and improvement of subject-classification schemes

Author

Listed:
  • Bart Thijs

    (KU Leuven)

  • Lin Zhang

    (KU Leuven
    North China University of Water Conservancy and Electric Power)

  • Wolfgang Glänzel

    (KU Leuven
    Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences)

Abstract

An attempt is made to cluster journals from the complete Web of Science database by using bibliographic coupling similarities. Since the sparseness of the underlying similarity matrix proved inappropriate for this exercise, second-order similarities have been used. Only 0.12 % out of 8282 journals had to be removed from the classification as being singletons. The quality at three hierarchical levels with 6, 14 and 24 clusters substantiated the applicability of this method. Cluster labelling was made on the basis of the about 70 subfields of the Leuven–Budapest subject-classification scheme that also allowed the comparison with the existing two-level journal classification system developed in Leuven. The further comparison with the 22 field classification system of the Essential Science Indicators does, however, reveal larger deviations.

Suggested Citation

  • Bart Thijs & Lin Zhang & Wolfgang Glänzel, 2015. "Bibliographic coupling and hierarchical clustering for the validation and improvement of subject-classification schemes," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 105(3), pages 1453-1467, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:scient:v:105:y:2015:i:3:d:10.1007_s11192-015-1641-3
    DOI: 10.1007/s11192-015-1641-3
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

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    10. Gerson Pech & Catarina Delgado & Silvio Paolo Sorella, 2022. "Classifying papers into subfields using Abstracts, Titles, Keywords and KeyWords Plus through pattern detection and optimization procedures: An application in Physics," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 73(11), pages 1513-1528, November.
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