IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ems/eureri/14528.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

How to Normalize Co-Occurrence Data? An Analysis of Some Well-Known Similarity Measures

Author

Listed:
  • van Eck, N.J.P.
  • Waltman, L.

Abstract

In scientometric research, the use of co-occurrence data is very common. In many cases, a similarity measure is employed to normalize the data. However, there is no consensus among researchers on which similarity measure is most appropriate for normalization purposes. In this paper, we theoretically analyze the properties of similarity measures for co-occurrence data, focusing in particular on four well-known measures: the association strength, the cosine, the inclusion index, and the Jaccard index. We also study the behavior of these measures empirically. Our analysis reveals that there exist two fundamentally different types of similarity measures, namely set-theoretic measures and probabilistic measures. The association strength is a probabilistic measure, while the cosine, the inclusion index, and the Jaccard index are set-theoretic measures. Both our theoretical and our empirical results indicate that co-occurrence data can best be normalized using a probabilistic measure. This provides strong support for the use of the association strength in scientometric research.

Suggested Citation

  • van Eck, N.J.P. & Waltman, L., 2009. "How to Normalize Co-Occurrence Data? An Analysis of Some Well-Known Similarity Measures," ERIM Report Series Research in Management ERS-2009-001-LIS, Erasmus Research Institute of Management (ERIM), ERIM is the joint research institute of the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University and the Erasmus School of Economics (ESE) at Erasmus University Rotterdam.
    • Handle: RePEc:ems:eureri:14528
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://repub.eur.nl/pub/14528/ERS-2009-001-LIS.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ludo Waltman & Nees Jan van Eck, 2007. "Some comments on the question whether co‐occurrence data should be normalized," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 58(11), pages 1701-1703, September.
    2. Ronald N. Kostoff & J. Antonio del Río & James A. Humenik & Esther Ofilia García & Ana María Ramírez, 2001. "Citation mining: Integrating text mining and bibliometrics for research user profiling," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 52(13), pages 1148-1156.
    3. Fernanda Morillo & María Bordons & Isabel Gómez, 2003. "Interdisciplinarity in science: A tentative typology of disciplines and research areas," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 54(13), pages 1237-1249, November.
    4. Bo Jarneving, 2008. "A variation of the calculation of the first author cocitation strength in author cocitation analysis," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 77(3), pages 485-504, December.
    5. Kevin W. Boyack & Richard Klavans & Katy Börner, 2005. "Mapping the backbone of science," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 64(3), pages 351-374, August.
    6. Liwen Vaughan & Justin You, 2006. "Comparing business competition positions based on Web co-link data: The global market vs. the Chinese market," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 68(3), pages 611-628, September.
    7. Katherine W. McCain, 1991. "Mapping economics through the journal literature: An experiment in journal cocitation analysis," Journal of the American Society for Information Science, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 42(4), pages 290-296, May.
    8. Tijssen, Robert J. W., 1992. "A quantitative assessment of interdisciplinary structures in science and technology: Co-classification analysis of energy research," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 21(1), pages 27-44, February.
    9. Waltman, L. & van Eck, N.J.P., 2007. "Some Comments on the Question Whether Co-occurrence Data Should Be Normalized," ERIM Report Series Research in Management ERS-2007-017-LIS, Erasmus Research Institute of Management (ERIM), ERIM is the joint research institute of the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University and the Erasmus School of Economics (ESE) at Erasmus University Rotterdam.
    10. Young Mee Chung & Jae Yun Lee, 2001. "A corpus‐based approach to comparative evaluation of statistical term association measures," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 52(4), pages 283-296.
    11. Per Ahlgren & Bo Jarneving & Ronald Rousseau, 2003. "Requirements for a cocitation similarity measure, with special reference to Pearson's correlation coefficient," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 54(6), pages 550-560, April.
    12. Carole L. Palmer, 1999. "Structures and strategies of interdisciplinary science," Journal of the American Society for Information Science, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 50(3), pages 242-253.
    13. Mark Rorvig, 1999. "Images of similarity: A visual exploration of optimal similarity metrics and scaling properties of TREC topic‐document sets," Journal of the American Society for Information Science, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 50(8), pages 639-651.
    14. Alexander Kopcsa & Edgar Schiebel, 1998. "Science and technology mapping: A new iteration model for representing multidimensional relationships," Journal of the American Society for Information Science, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 49(1), pages 7-17.
    15. Loet Leydesdorff & Liwen Vaughan, 2006. "Co‐occurrence matrices and their applications in information science: Extending ACA to the Web environment," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 57(12), pages 1616-1628, October.
    16. Liwen Vaughan, 2006. "Visualizing linguistic and cultural differences using Web co‐link data," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 57(9), pages 1178-1193, July.
    17. H. P. F. Peters & R. R. Braam & A. F. J. van Raan, 1995. "Cognitive resemblance and citation relations in chemical engineering publications," Journal of the American Society for Information Science, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 46(1), pages 9-21, January.
    18. Katherine W. McCain, 1990. "Mapping authors in intellectual space: A technical overview," Journal of the American Society for Information Science, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 41(6), pages 433-443, September.
    19. R. N. Kostoff & Henry J. Eberhart & Darrell Ray Toothman, 1999. "Hypersonic and supersonic flow roadmaps using bibliometrics and database tomography," Journal of the American Society for Information Science, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 50(5), pages 427-447.
    20. Gaston Heimeriks & Marianne Hörlesberger & Peter Van Den Besselaar, 2003. "Mapping communication and collaboration in heterogeneous research networks," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 58(2), pages 391-413, October.
    21. Jian Qin, 2000. "Semantic similarities between a keyword database and a controlled vocabulary database: An investigation in the antibiotic resistance literature," Journal of the American Society for Information Science, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 51(2), pages 166-180.
    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. Bar-Ilan, Judit, 2008. "Informetrics at the beginning of the 21st century—A review," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 2(1), pages 1-52.
    2. van Eck, N.J.P. & Waltman, L., 2007. "Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis," ERIM Report Series Research in Management ERS-2007-091-LIS, Erasmus Research Institute of Management (ERIM), ERIM is the joint research institute of the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University and the Erasmus School of Economics (ESE) at Erasmus University Rotterdam.
    3. Leydesdorff, Loet & Wagner, Caroline S., 2008. "International collaboration in science and the formation of a core group," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 2(4), pages 317-325.
    4. Ismael Rafols & Martin Meyer, 2010. "Diversity and network coherence as indicators of interdisciplinarity: case studies in bionanoscience," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 82(2), pages 263-287, February.
    5. Hsiao, Chun Hua & Yang, Chyan, 2011. "The intellectual development of the technology acceptance model: A co-citation analysis," International Journal of Information Management, Elsevier, vol. 31(2), pages 128-136.
    6. García-Lillo, Francisco & Seva-Larrosa, Pedro & Sánchez-García, Eduardo, 2023. "What is going on in entrepreneurship research? A bibliometric and SNA analysis," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 158(C).
    7. Jose Luis Ortega & Isidro Aguillo & Viv Cothey & Andrea Scharnhorst, 2008. "Maps of the academic web in the European Higher Education Area — an exploration of visual web indicators," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 74(2), pages 295-308, February.
    8. Junping Qiu & Yejun Li & Jiang Li & Quane Ren, 2008. "An exploratory study on substantive co-link analysis: A modification to total co-link analysis," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 76(2), pages 327-341, August.
    9. García-Lillo, Francisco & Seva-Larrosa, Pedro & Sánchez-García, Eduardo, 2024. "On the basis of research on ‘green’ in the disciplines of management and business," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 172(C).
    10. Alan L. Porter & Alex S. Cohen & J. David Roessner & Marty Perreault, 2007. "Measuring researcher interdisciplinarity," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 72(1), pages 117-147, July.
    11. Feng, Feng & Zhang, Leiyong & Du, Yuneng & Wang, Weiguang, 2015. "Visualization and quantitative study in bibliographic databases: A case in the field of university–industry cooperation," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 9(1), pages 118-134.
    12. Waltman, L. & van Eck, N.J.P., 2007. "Some Comments on the Question Whether Co-occurrence Data Should Be Normalized," ERIM Report Series Research in Management ERS-2007-017-LIS, Erasmus Research Institute of Management (ERIM), ERIM is the joint research institute of the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University and the Erasmus School of Economics (ESE) at Erasmus University Rotterdam.
    13. Eom, Sean, 2008. "All author cocitation analysis and first author cocitation analysis: A comparative empirical investigation," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 2(1), pages 53-64.
    14. Seongkyoon Jeong & Jong-Chan Kim & Jae Young Choi, 2015. "Technology convergence: What developmental stage are we in?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 104(3), pages 841-871, September.
    15. Giovanni Abramo & Ciriaco Andrea D'Angelo & Flavia Costa, 2012. "Identifying interdisciplinarity through the disciplinary classification of coauthors of scientific publications," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 63(11), pages 2206-2222, November.
    16. Ying Huang & Wolfgang Glänzel & Lin Zhang, 2021. "Tracing the development of mapping knowledge domains," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(7), pages 6201-6224, July.
    17. William B. Gartner & Per Davidsson & Shaker A. Zahra, 2006. "Are you Talking to Me? The Nature of Community in Entrepreneurship Scholarship," Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, , vol. 30(3), pages 321-331, May.
    18. Jesper W. Schneider & Birger Larsen & Peter Ingwersen, 2009. "A comparative study of first and all-author co-citation counting, and two different matrix generation approaches applied for author co-citation analyses," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 80(1), pages 103-130, July.
    19. Jun-Ping Qiu & Ke Dong & Hou-Qiang Yu, 2014. "Comparative study on structure and correlation among author co-occurrence networks in bibliometrics," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 101(2), pages 1345-1360, November.
    20. Wilfred Dolfsma & Loet Leydesdorff, 2010. "The citation field of evolutionary economics," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 20(5), pages 645-664, October.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Jaccard index; association strength; cosine; inclusion index; similarity measure;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C49 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods: Special Topics - - - Other
    • M - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics
    • M11 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Business Administration - - - Production Management
    • R4 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Transportation Economics

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:ems:eureri:14528. 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: RePub (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/erimanl.html .

    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.