Universality of citation distributions: Toward an objective measure of scientific impact

Radicchi, Filippo; Fortunato, Santo; Castellano, Claudio

doi:10.1073/pnas.0806977105

Cited by 705 publications

(726 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…Citations are also utilized together with other criteria to determine research priorities (Neff and Corley, 2009), allocate funding, and decide appointments, promotions and tenures (Reed, 1995;Ball, 2007). The main problem with using citations for evaluations is a large difference in the average number of citations received by papers in different research fields (Seglen, 1997;Iglesias and Pecharromán, 2007;Radicchi et al, 2008). Therefore measurements of performance that are derived from citation count cannot be directly compared across research fields.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Therefore measurements of performance that are derived from citation count cannot be directly compared across research fields. While analyses of bibliometric indicators were performed previously for multiple research fields (Iglesias and Pecharromán, 2007;Radicchi et al, 2008;Althouse et al, 2009) and subfields (Narin et al, 1976;Vinkler, 1988), they were never studied at the species level. A large number of species are used as experimental subjects in many areas of biological research, including plant and animal science, mycology, bacteriology, and others.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Analysis of bibliometric indicators to determine citation bias

Šimko

2015

Palgrave Commun

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Citations of research papers and citation-related indicators are frequently used factors in determining research priorities, allocating funding, and deciding appointments, promotions and tenures. The main problem with using citations for a variety of evaluations is a substantial difference in the average number of citations received by papers in different research fields and subfields. A large number of species are subjects of biological research, but the distributions of their citations have not been studied in detail. The key objective of the present work was to determine whether the choice of experimental subjects influence bias in citations. A case study was performed on papers from 108 plant species and five research fields. Funnel plot analyses and computer simulations identified species-related citation bias within all research fields. Relationships between bibliometric indicators imply that species with a fast growing number of publications in recent years (for example, new model organisms) generally have a higher average number of citations per paper than is the overall mean for the research field. In contrast, the average number of citations received by the five most prominent papers of the species was strongly correlated with the total number of published papers from laboratories working with the species. The current study indicates that despite the high frequency of cross-species citations, citations of species show a pattern similar to separate subfields. Although these analyses were performed on plant research papers, the findings have relevance for other areas of research where experimental subjects tend to form separate subfields. To reliably compare citations across subfields, a new type of bibliometric indicator is needed. In the meantime committees evaluating quality of research should take into consideration that citations of papers within a research field might be biased due to the experimental subjects used in the studies.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Analysis of bibliometric indicators to determine citation bias

Šimko

2015

Palgrave Commun

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“…In Refs. [45][46][47][48], it is argued that rescaling each citation count N c by the average number of citations per paper N (avg) c in a given discipline allows a comparison between scientists in different disciplines. If we take this proposal literally as a recipe for calculating a modified h in each discipline, the traditional h-condition becomes…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…• renormalizing citation counts to each paper within a given discipline by the average number of citations per paper in that discipline [45][46][47][48].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Dienes

2015

Journal of Informetrics

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“…IV, while Sec. V concludes the work and outlines the possibilities for further improving the artificial framework by including additional relevant aspects of the citation dynamics, such as differences between scientific disciplines [24] and journal reputation [25] (see [26,27] for recent progress in modeling the various aspects of the research and citation process).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Model-based evaluation of scientific impact indicators

Medo

Cimini

2016

Phys. Rev. E

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Using bibliometric data artificially generated through a model of citation dynamics calibrated on empirical data, we compare several indicators for the scientific impact of individual researchers. The use of such a controlled setup has the advantage of avoiding the biases present in real databases, and it allows us to assess which aspects of the model dynamics and which traits of individual researchers a particular indicator actually reflects. We find that the simple average citation count of the authored papers performs well in capturing the intrinsic scientific ability of researchers, regardless of the length of their career. On the other hand, when productivity complements ability in the evaluation process, the notorious h and g indices reveal their potential, yet their normalized variants do not always yield a fair comparison between researchers at different career stages. Notably, the use of logarithmic units for citation counts allows us to build simple indicators with performance equal to that of h and g. Our analysis may provide useful hints for a proper use of bibliometric indicators. Additionally, our framework can be extended by including other aspects of the scientific production process and citation dynamics, with the potential to become a standard tool for the assessment of impact metrics.

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Universality of citation distributions: Toward an objective measure of scientific impact

Cited by 705 publications

References 27 publications

Analysis of bibliometric indicators to determine citation bias

Analysis of bibliometric indicators to determine citation bias

Completing h

Model-based evaluation of scientific impact indicators

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