Editor:
Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. Departamento de Economía
Issued date:
2011-10
ISSN:
2340-5031
Sponsor:
The authors acknowledge financial support by Santander Universities Global Division of Banco Santander. Ruiz-Castillo acknowledges financial support from the Spanish MEC through grant SEJ2007-67436 European Community's Seventh Framework Program
Rights:
Atribución-NoComercial-SinDerivadas 3.0 España
Abstract:
In many datasets, articles are classified into sub-fields through the journals in which they have
been published. The problem is that many journals are assigned to a single sub-field, but many
others are assigned to several sub-fields. This paper discusses aIn many datasets, articles are classified into sub-fields through the journals in which they have
been published. The problem is that many journals are assigned to a single sub-field, but many
others are assigned to several sub-fields. This paper discusses a multiplicative and a fractional
strategy to deal with this situation, and introduces a normalization procedure in the multiplicative
case that takes into account differences in mean citation rates across sub-fields. The empirical part
studies different aspects of citation distributions under the two strategies, namely: (i) the number of
articles, (ii) the mean citation rate, (iii) the broad shape of the distribution, (iv) the characterization in
terms of size- and scale-invariant indicators of high- and low-impact, and (v) the presence of
extreme distributions, or distributions that behave very differently from the rest. It is found that, in
spite of large differences in the number of articles according to both strategies, the similarity of the
citation characteristics of articles published in journals assigned to one or several sub-fields
guarantees that choosing one of the two strategies may not lead to a radically different picture in
practical applications. Nevertheless, the evaluation of citation excellence through a high-impact
indicator may considerably differ depending on that choice.[+][-]