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The skewness of science in 219 sub-fields and a number of aggregates

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dc.affiliation.dptoUC3M. Departamento de Economíaes
dc.contributor.authorAlbarrán, Pedro
dc.contributor.authorCrespo, Juan A.
dc.contributor.authorOrtuño, Ignacio
dc.contributor.authorRuiz-Castillo, Javier
dc.date.accessioned2012-06-12T14:12:08Z
dc.date.available2012-06-12T14:12:08Z
dc.date.issued2011-05
dc.description.abstractThis paper studies evidence from Thomson Scientific (TS) about the citation process of 3.7 million articles published in the period 1998 2002 in 219 Web of Science (WoS) categories, or sub fields. Reference and citation distributions have very different characteristics across sub fields. However, when analyzed with the Characteristic Scores and Scales (CSS) technique, which is replication and scale invariant, the shape of these distributions over three broad categories of articles appears strikingly similar. Reference distributions are mildly skewed, but citation distributions with a 5 year citation window are highly skewed: the mean is 20 points above the median, while 9 10% of all articles in the upper tail account for about 44% of all citations. The aggregation of sub fields into dis ciplines and fields according to several aggregation schemes preserve this feature of citation distributions. It should be noted that when we look into subsets of articles within the lower and upper tails of citation distributions the universality partially breaks down. On the other hand, for 140 of the 219 sub fields the existence of a power law cannot be rejected. However, contrary to what is generally believed, at the sub field level the scaling parameter is above 3.5 most of the time, and power laws are relatively small: on average, they represent 2% of all articles and account for 13.5% of all citations. The results of the aggregation into disciplines and fields reveal that power law algebra is a subtle phenomenon
dc.description.sponsorshipThe authors acknowledge financial support from the Spanish MEC through grants SEJ2007 63098, SEJ2007 67436, ECO2009 11165, and ECO2010 19596
dc.description.statusPublicado
dc.format.mimetypeapplication/pdf
dc.identifier.bibliographicCitationScientometrics, 2011, v. 88, n. 2, pp. 385-397
dc.identifier.doi10.1007/s11192-011-0407-9
dc.identifier.issn0138-9130
dc.identifier.publicationfirstpage385
dc.identifier.publicationissue2
dc.identifier.publicationlastpage397
dc.identifier.publicationtitleScientometrics
dc.identifier.publicationvolume88
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/10016/14543
dc.language.isoeng
dc.publisherSpringer
dc.relation.isversionofhttp://hdl.handle.net/10016/9616
dc.relation.isversionofhttp://hdl.handle.net/10016/10968
dc.relation.projectIDinfo:eu-repo/grantAgreement/EC/FP7/217436
dc.relation.projectIDGobierno de España. SEJ2007-63098
dc.relation.projectIDGobierno de España. SEJ2007-67436
dc.relation.projectIDGobierno de España. ECO2009-11165
dc.relation.projectIDGobierno de España. ECO2010-19596
dc.relation.publisherversionhttp://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11192-011-0407-9
dc.rights© Akadémiai Kiado
dc.rights.accessRightsopen access
dc.subject.ecienciaEconomía
dc.subject.otherResearch performance
dc.subject.otherCitation analysis
dc.subject.otherPower laws
dc.subject.otherCharacteristic Scores
dc.titleThe skewness of science in 219 sub-fields and a number of aggregates
dc.typeresearch article*
dc.type.hasVersionAM*
dspace.entity.typePublication
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