IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/scient/v88y2011i2d10.1007_s11192-011-0387-9.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Benford’s law and citations, articles and impact factors of scientific journals

Author

Listed:
  • Juan Miguel Campanario

    (Universidad de Alcalá)

  • María Angeles Coslado

    (Fundación Española para la Ciencia y la Tecnología)

Abstract

First order digits in data sets of natural and social data often follow a distribution called Benford’s law. We studied the number of articles published, citations received and impact factors of all journals indexed in the Science Citation Index from 1998 to 2007. We tested their compliance with Benford’s law. Citations data followed Benford’s law remarkably well in all years studied. However, for the data on the numbers of articles, the differences between the values predicted by Benford’s law and the observed values were always statistically significant. This was also the case for most data for impact factors.

Suggested Citation

  • Juan Miguel Campanario & María Angeles Coslado, 2011. "Benford’s law and citations, articles and impact factors of scientific journals," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 88(2), pages 421-432, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:scient:v:88:y:2011:i:2:d:10.1007_s11192-011-0387-9
    DOI: 10.1007/s11192-011-0387-9
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11192-011-0387-9
    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/s11192-011-0387-9?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. Hales, Douglas N. & Sridharan, V. & Radhakrishnan, Abirami & Chakravorty, Satya S. & Siha, Samia M., 2008. "Testing the accuracy of employee-reported data: An inexpensive alternative approach to traditional methods," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 189(3), pages 583-593, September.
    2. George Judge & Laura Schechter, 2009. "Detecting Problems in Survey Data Using Benford’s Law," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 44(1).
    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. Lasse Pröger & Paul Griesberger & Klaus Hackländer & Norbert Brunner & Manfred Kühleitner, 2021. "Benford’s Law for Telemetry Data of Wildlife," Stats, MDPI, vol. 4(4), pages 1-7, November.
    2. M. Jayasree & C. S. Pavana Jyothi & P. Ramya, 2018. "Benford’s Law and Stock Market—The Implications for Investors: The Evidence from India Nifty Fifty," Jindal Journal of Business Research, , vol. 7(2), pages 103-121, December.
    3. Venuka Aggarwal & Khushdeep Dharni, 2020. "Deshelling the Shell Companies Using Benford’s Law: An Emerging Market Study," Vikalpa: The Journal for Decision Makers, , vol. 45(3), pages 160-169, September.
    4. Hsiang-chi Tseng & Wei-neng Huang & Ding-wei Huang, 2017. "Modified Benford’s law for two-exponent distributions," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 110(3), pages 1403-1413, March.
    5. Bogdan Vasile Ileanu & Marcel Ausloos & Claudiu Herteliu & Marian Pompiliu Cristescu, 2019. "Intriguing behavior when testing the impact of quotation marks usage in Google search results," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 53(5), pages 2507-2519, September.
    6. Alexandre Donizeti Alves & Horacio Hideki Yanasse & Nei Yoshihiro Soma, 2014. "Benford’s Law and articles of scientific journals: comparison of JCR® and Scopus data," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 98(1), pages 173-184, January.

    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. Theoharry Grammatikos & Nikolaos I. Papanikolaou, 2021. "Applying Benford’s Law to Detect Accounting Data Manipulation in the Banking Industry," Journal of Financial Services Research, Springer;Western Finance Association, vol. 59(1), pages 115-142, April.
    2. Ronelle Burger & Canh Thien Dang & Trudy Owens, 2017. "Better performing NGOs do report more accurately: Evidence from investigating Ugandan NGO financial accounts," Discussion Papers 2017-10, University of Nottingham, CREDIT.
    3. Villas-Boas, Sofia B. & Fu, Qiuzi & Judge, George, 2017. "Benford’s law and the FSD distribution of economic behavioral micro data," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 486(C), pages 711-719.
    4. Fernando Aragon & Diego Restuccia & Juan Pablo Rud, 2022. "Assessing misallocation in agriculture: plots versus farms," Working Papers tecipa-718, University of Toronto, Department of Economics.
    5. Sitsofe Tsagbey & Miguel de Carvalho & Garritt L. Page, 2017. "All Data are Wrong, but Some are Useful? Advocating the Need for Data Auditing," The American Statistician, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 71(3), pages 231-235, July.
    6. Chegere, Martin Julius, 2018. "Post-harvest losses reduction by small-scale maize farmers: The role of handling practices," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 77(C), pages 103-115.
    7. Neher, Frank, 2012. "Preferences for redistribution around the world," Discussion Papers 2012/2, Free University Berlin, School of Business & Economics.
    8. Kalaichelvan, Mohandass & Lim Kai Jie, Shawn, 2012. "A Critical Evaluation of the Significance of Round Numbers in European Equity Markets in Light of the Predictions from Benford’s Law," MPRA Paper 40960, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    9. Kibrom A. Abay & Leah E. M. Bevis & Christopher B. Barrett, 2021. "Measurement Error Mechanisms Matter: Agricultural Intensification with Farmer Misperceptions and Misreporting," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 103(2), pages 498-522, March.
    10. Matthew A. Cole & David J. Maddison & Liyun Zhang, 2020. "Testing the emission reduction claims of CDM projects using the Benford’s Law," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 160(3), pages 407-426, June.
    11. Pater, Ciprian Florin & Mazrekaj, Deni, 2020. "Power Laws, Prices and National Accounts: Are There Any Irregularities?," SocArXiv gwha2, Center for Open Science.
    12. Price Gregory N. & Elu Juliet U., 2017. "Climate Change and Cross-State Islamist Terrorism in Nigeria," Peace Economics, Peace Science, and Public Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 23(3), pages 1-13, August.
    13. Giuseppe Marzo & Yannick Tazzari & Stefano Bonnini, 2020. "Benford’s Law: genesi, letteratura e applicazioni empiriche," Working Papers 2020019, University of Ferrara, Department of Economics.
    14. Clippe, Paulette & Ausloos, Marcel, 2012. "Benford’s law and Theil transform of financial data," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 391(24), pages 6556-6567.
    15. Faraji Kasidi & H. Chaturvedi & Rahul Singh, 2010. "Detecting Data Error and Inaccuracy," Margin: The Journal of Applied Economic Research, National Council of Applied Economic Research, vol. 4(4), pages 405-425, November.
    16. Cheng Zhao & Chong Alex Wang, 2023. "A cross-site comparison of online review manipulation using Benford’s law," Electronic Commerce Research, Springer, vol. 23(1), pages 365-406, March.
    17. Beegle, Kathleen & Carletto, Calogero & Himelein, Kristen, 2012. "Reliability of recall in agricultural data," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 98(1), pages 34-41.
    18. Hatice Uenal & David Hampel, 2017. "Economic Aspects of the Missing Data Problem - the Case of the Patient Registry," Acta Universitatis Agriculturae et Silviculturae Mendelianae Brunensis, Mendel University Press, vol. 65(5), pages 1779-1791.
    19. Stefan Günnel & Karl-Heinz Tödter, 2009. "Does Benford’s Law hold in economic research and forecasting?," Empirica, Springer;Austrian Institute for Economic Research;Austrian Economic Association, vol. 36(3), pages 273-292, August.
    20. Holz, Carsten A., 2014. "The quality of China's GDP statistics," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 30(C), pages 309-338.

    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:88:y:2011:i:2:d:10.1007_s11192-011-0387-9. 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.