How can journal impact factors be normalized across fields of science? An assessment in terms of percentile ranks and fractional counts

Loet Leydesdorff A · Zhou Ping · Lutz Bornmann

38 citations0/0 files storedJournal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology

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scientometrics and bibliometrics research Psychology Research and Bibliometrics Web visibility and informetrics

Abstract

Using the CD‐ROM version of the Science Citation Index 2010 (N = 3,705 journals), we study the (combined) effects of (a) fractional counting on the impact factor (IF) and (b) transformation of the skewed citation distributions into a distribution of 100 percentiles and six percentile rank classes (top‐1%, top‐5%, etc.). Do these approaches lead to field‐normalized impact measures for journals? In addition to the 2‐year IF (IF2), we consider the 5‐year IF (IF5), the respective numerators of these IFs, and the number of Total Cites, counted both as integers and fractionally. These various indicators are tested against the hypothesis that the classification of journals into 11 broad fields by PatentBoard/NSF (National Science Foundation) provides statistically significant between‐field effects. Using fractional counting the between‐field variance is reduced by 91.7% in the case of IF5, and by 79.2% in the case of IF2. However, the differences in citation counts are not significantly affected by fractional counting. These results accord with previous studies, but the longer citation window of a fractionally counted IF5 can lead to significant improvement in the normalization across fields.

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References

1965Networks of Scientific Papers 2004Science and Engineering Indicators 1972Citation Analysis as a Tool in Journal Evaluation 1997Why the impact factor of journals should not be used for evaluating research 2008What do citation counts measure? A review of studies on citing behavior 1979Is citation analysis a legitimate evaluation tool?2004Life of the mind: The interface of psychopharmaceuticals, domestic economies, and social abandonment 2008Universality of citation distributions: Toward an objective measure of scientific impact

Cited by

2016Citation score normalized by cited references (CSNCR): The introduction of a new citation impact indicator 2016Citation score normalized by cited references (CSNCR): The introduction of a new citation impact indicator 2013Field‐normalized impact factors ( IFs ): A comparison of rescaling and fractionally counted IFs 2016Normalization of Mendeley reader impact on the reader- and paper-side: A comparison of the mean discipline normalized reader score (MDNRS) with the mean normalized reader score (MNRS) and bare reader counts

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