IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/scient/v113y2017i1d10.1007_s11192-017-2471-2.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The “space of physics journals”: topological structure and the Journal Impact Factor

Author

Listed:
  • Yurij L. Katchanov

    (National Research University Higher School of Economics (HSE))

  • Yulia V. Markova

    (American Association for the Advancement of Science)

Abstract

An empirical distribution function of citations to journal articles (EDF for short) can become fundamental tool for analyzing the scientific journals. Endeavors at making bibliometric analysis independent of the intuition conveyed by average citation levels have led us to the study of qualitative properties of physics journals in the functional space of EDFs. We show that the structure of this space establishes the connections and relationships that determine the essential features of physics journals. The research provides an analysis of 240 physics journals indexed in Journal Citation Reports 2015. The relevance of EDFs clustering is discussed. Our findings reveal four-cluster space of physics journals. The space brings to light the essential distinctions between physics journals and shows different level of influence of scientific publishers belonging to different types (professional physics societies, transnational and local publishers). The study of EDFs grouped by publishers reveals two binary oppositions that structure relations between them: “global–local” publishers and “high cited–low cited” publishers.

Suggested Citation

  • 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.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:scient:v:113:y:2017:i:1:d:10.1007_s11192-017-2471-2
    DOI: 10.1007/s11192-017-2471-2
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11192-017-2471-2
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11192-017-2471-2?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. Nees Jan Eck & Ludo Waltman, 2017. "Citation-based clustering of publications using CitNetExplorer and VOSviewer," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 111(2), pages 1053-1070, May.
    2. Loet Leydesdorff & Paul Wouters & Lutz Bornmann, 2016. "Professional and citizen bibliometrics: complementarities and ambivalences in the development and use of indicators—a state-of-the-art report," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 109(3), pages 2129-2150, December.
    3. Bouyssou, Denis & Marchant, Thierry, 2014. "An axiomatic approach to bibliometric rankings and indices," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 8(3), pages 449-477.
    4. 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.
    5. 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.
    6. Wolfgang Glänzel & Henk F. Moed, 2013. "Opinion paper: thoughts and facts on bibliometric indicators," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 96(1), pages 381-394, July.
    7. Bar-Ilan, Judit, 2008. "Informetrics at the beginning of the 21st century—A review," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 2(1), pages 1-52.
    8. Loet Leydesdorff & Lutz Bornmann & Caroline S. Wagner, 2017. "Generating clustered journal maps: an automated system for hierarchical classification," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 110(3), pages 1601-1614, March.
    9. 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.
    10. Huang, Ding-wei, 2017. "Impact factor distribution revisited," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 482(C), pages 173-180.
    11. Zhongheng Zhang & Sven Van Poucke, 2017. "Citations for Randomized Controlled Trials in Sepsis Literature: The Halo Effect Caused by Journal Impact Factor," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 12(1), pages 1-13, January.
    12. Seiler, Christian & Wohlrabe, Klaus, 2014. "How robust are journal rankings based on the impact factor? Evidence from the economic sciences," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 8(4), pages 904-911.
    13. Wolfgang Glänzel & Henk F. Moed, 2002. "Journal impact measures in bibliometric research," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 53(2), pages 171-193, February.
    14. Finardi, Ugo, 2013. "Correlation between Journal Impact Factor and Citation Performance: An experimental study," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 7(2), pages 357-370.
    15. 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.
    16. Antonio J. Gómez-Núñez & Benjamín Vargas-Quesada & Félix Moya-Anegón, 2016. "Updating the SCImago journal and country rank classification: A new approach using Ward's clustering and alternative combination of citation measures," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 67(1), pages 178-190, January.
    17. Vincent Larivière & Stefanie Haustein & Philippe Mongeon, 2015. "The Oligopoly of Academic Publishers in the Digital Era," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(6), pages 1-15, June.
    18. David I. Stern, 2013. "Uncertainty Measures for Economics Journal Impact Factors," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 51(1), pages 173-189, March.
    19. Sarah de Rijcke & Paul F. Wouters & Alex D. Rushforth & Thomas P. Franssen & Björn Hammarfelt, 2016. "Evaluation practices and effects of indicator use—a literature review," Research Evaluation, Oxford University Press, vol. 25(2), pages 161-169.
    20. Iman Tahamtan & Askar Safipour Afshar & Khadijeh Ahamdzadeh, 2016. "Factors affecting number of citations: a comprehensive review of the literature," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 107(3), pages 1195-1225, June.
    21. Antonia Ferrer-Sapena & Enrique A. Sánchez-Pérez & Fernanda Peset & Luis-Millán González & Rafael Aleixandre-Benavent, 2016. "The Impact Factor as a measuring tool of the prestige of the journals in research assessment in mathematics," Research Evaluation, Oxford University Press, vol. 25(3), pages 306-314.
    22. Xue-Li Liu & Shuang-Shuang Gai & Jing Zhou, 2016. "Journal Impact Factor: Do the Numerator and Denominator Need Correction?," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 11(3), pages 1-15, March.
    23. Elchanan Mossel & Allan Sly & Omer Tamuz, 2015. "Strategic Learning and the Topology of Social Networks," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 83(5), pages 1755-1794, September.
    24. Joost Kosten, 2016. "A classification of the use of research indicators," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 108(1), pages 457-464, July.
    25. Fionn Murtagh & Pierre Legendre, 2014. "Ward’s Hierarchical Agglomerative Clustering Method: Which Algorithms Implement Ward’s Criterion?," Journal of Classification, Springer;The Classification Society, vol. 31(3), pages 274-295, October.
    26. Gergely Palla & Gergely Tibély & Enys Mones & Péter Pollner & Tamás Vicsek, 2015. "Hierarchical networks of scientific journals," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 1(palcomms2), pages 15016-15016, July.
    27. Barabási, A.L & Jeong, H & Néda, Z & Ravasz, E & Schubert, A & Vicsek, T, 2002. "Evolution of the social network of scientific collaborations," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 311(3), pages 590-614.
    28. Tobias Kiesslich & Silke B Weineck & Dorothea Koelblinger, 2016. "Reasons for Journal Impact Factor Changes: Influence of Changing Source Items," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 11(4), pages 1-12, April.
    29. 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)

    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. 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.
    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. Katchanov, Yurij L. & Markova, Yulia V. & Shmatko, Natalia A., 2019. "The distinction machine: Physics journals from the perspective of the Kolmogorov–Smirnov statistic," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 13(4).
    4. Juan Miguel Campanario, 2018. "Are leaders really leading? Journals that are first in Web of Science subject categories in the context of their groups," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 115(1), pages 111-130, April.
    5. Eugenio Petrovich, 2022. "Bibliometrics in Press. Representations and uses of bibliometric indicators in the Italian daily newspapers," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(5), pages 2195-2233, May.
    6. Lutz Bornmann & Julian N. Marewski, 2019. "Heuristics as conceptual lens for understanding and studying the usage of bibliometrics in research evaluation," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 120(2), pages 419-459, August.
    7. 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).
    8. Juan Miguel Campanario, 2017. "JIF-Plots: using plots of citations versus citable items as a tool to study journals and subject categories and discover new scientometric relationships," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 113(2), pages 1141-1154, November.
    9. Giovanni Abramo & Ciriaco Andrea D’Angelo & Flavia Costa, 2023. "Correlating article citedness and journal impact: an empirical investigation by field on a large-scale dataset," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 128(3), pages 1877-1894, March.
    10. 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.
    11. Currie, Russell R. & Pandher, Gurupdesh S., 2020. "Finance journal rankings: Active scholar assessment revisited," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 111(C).
    12. Joseph Gerald Hirschberg & Jeanette Ngaire Lye, 2020. "Grading Journals In Economics: The Abcs Of The Abdc," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 34(4), pages 876-921, September.
    13. 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.
    14. Fargher, Neil & Wee, Marvin, 2019. "The impact of Ball and Brown (1968) on generations of research," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 55-72.
    15. Bornmann, Lutz & Leydesdorff, Loet, 2017. "Skewness of citation impact data and covariates of citation distributions: A large-scale empirical analysis based on Web of Science data," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 11(1), pages 164-175.
    16. 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).
    17. Merigó, José M. & Yang, Jian-Bo, 2017. "A bibliometric analysis of operations research and management science," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 73(C), pages 37-48.
    18. Yao, Ye & Du, Huibin & Zou, Hongyang & Zhou, Peng & Antunes, Carlos Henggeler & Neumann, Anne & Yeh, Sonia, 2023. "Fifty years of Energy Policy: A bibliometric overview," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 183(C).
    19. Alessandro Margherita & Gianluca Elia & Claudio Petti, 2022. "What Is Quality in Research? Building a Framework of Design, Process and Impact Attributes and Evaluation Perspectives," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(5), pages 1-18, March.
    20. Waltman, Ludo, 2016. "A review of the literature on citation impact indicators," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 10(2), pages 365-391.

    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:spr:scient:v:113:y:2017:i:1:d:10.1007_s11192-017-2471-2. 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: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    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.