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Nowadays, measure the quality and quantity of the scientific production is an important necessity since almost every research assessment decision depends, to a great extent, upon the scientific merits of the involved researchers. To do that, many different indicators have been proposed in the literature. In addition, the highly cited papers of a discipline could be discovered by means of citation classics analysis. On the other hand, the extraction of knowledge from the intellectual, social or conceptual structure of a research field could be done by means of science mapping analysis based on bibliographic networks. In this paper, we introduce some of the most important techniques and software tools to analyze the impact of a research field and its scientific structures. Particularly, four bibliometric indices (h, g, hg and q2), the h-classics approach to identify the classics papers of a research field and three science free science mapping software tools (CitNetExplorer, SciMAT and VOSViewer) are shown.

Citation classics identify those highly cited papers which are an important reference point in a research field. To identify a paper as a citation classic we have to fix a citation threshold value. Usually, this threshold value should not be the same for all research fields because each field presents its respective citation pattern. Studies of citation classics in the literature define particular criteria and methods to set citation thresholds, which are often set arbitrarily and designed ad-hoc, and do not allow the scientific community to validate and compare their results. In this paper we introduce the concept of H-Classics to overcome this problem and provide scientific community a standardization of key constructs. We present a new and systematic method to identify citation classics. This identification method of highly cited papers is based on the H-index and thank to the properties of H-index it is sensitive to the own characteristics of any research discipline and also its evolution. Therefore, the concept of H-Classics allows to systematize search procedure of citation classics for any field of research.

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