Publication: High- and low-impact citation measures : empirical applications
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Publication date
2011-01
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Tutors
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Publisher
Elsevier
Abstract
This paper contains the first empirical applications of a novel methodology for comparing
the citation distributions of research units working in the same homogeneous field. The
paper considers a situation in which the world citation distribution in 22 scientific fields
is partitioned into three geographical areas: the U.S., the European Union (EU), and the
rest of the world (RW). Given a critical citation level (CCL), we suggest using two real
valued indicators to describe the shape of each area’s distribution: a high- and a low-impact
measure defined over the set of articles with citations below or above the CCL. It is found
that, when the CCL is fixed at the 80th percentile of the world citation distribution, the U.S.
performs dramatically better than the EU and the RW according to both indicators in all
scientific fields. This superiority generally increases as we move from the incidence to the
intensity and the citation inequality aspects of the phenomena in question. Surprisingly,
changes observed when the CCL is increased from the 80th to the 95th percentile are of
a relatively small order of magnitude. Finally, it is found that international co-authorship
increases the high-impact and reduces the low-impact level in the three geographical areas.
This is especially the case for the EU and the RW when they cooperate with the U.S.
Description
Keywords
Research evaluation, Citation distribution, Scientific ranking, Impact indicators
Bibliographic citation
Journal of Informetrics, 2011, v. 5, n. 1, pp. 122-145