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Behind citing-side normalization of citations: some properties of the journal impact factor

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Abstract

A new family of citation normalization methods appeared recently, in addition to the classical methods of “cited-side” normalization and the iterative measures of intellectual influence in the wake of Pinski and Narin influence weights. These methods have a quite global scope in citation analysis but were first applied to the journal impact, in the experimental Audience Factor (AF) and the Scopus Source-Normalized Impact per Paper (SNIP). Analyzing some properties of the Garfield’s Journal Impact Factor, this note highlights the rationale of citing-side (or source-level, fractional citation, ex ante) normalization.

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Notes

  1. The reader may refer to classical reviews on impact such as Glänzel and Moed ( 2002). Among the first references on classical normalization one can find Murugesan and Moravcsik (1978), Schubert and Braun (1986), Sen (1992) and Czapski (1997) on rank approaches. See also Vinkler (2004).

  2. Preliminary results were presented at the 11th International Conference on Science and Technology Indicators conference, Leiden, Sept 2010.

  3. The original ISI-Thomson Reuters' Journal Impact Factor calculation presents a flaw in the consistency of literature considered at the numerator which includes types of documents not present in the denominator (Moed et al. 1996). This is distinct from the case where citing and cited literature are each consistently defined, but on different filters.

  4. The assumption that references lists are shorter in average in proceedings (such as the fake WCP here) than in the previous literature, likely to be dominated by articles, could be easily expressed by a correcting factor on q.

  5. another case comes from editorial constraints on the number of references, which lead to very short lists, resulting however from an academic selection process – contrarily to trade journals.

  6. Strictly with respect to journal-based classification (old Thomson-SCI classification, Thomson ESI). Current SCI classification goes further than the journal-level.

  7. A point of terminology: the new approach was introduced under the name of citing-side or fractional citation normalization, referring to a general principle, the reversal of perspective on field normalization, with examples of particular applications. In other works cited above one finds source-level, a priori, fractionated citation normalization. Promoters of methods may wish to either consider those terms as synonymous to the principle above, or reserve those names for a particular methodology. Clearly, terms such as Audience Factor, SNIP, MCNSC… are associated with specific calculation protocols.

  8. In the case of the Audience Factor, the critique firstly bore on an inessential aspect, the final scale correction of the AF by the "all science" value. The purpose of this single coefficient is to make the values of the Audience Factor and the Impact Factor directly comparable, and does not introduce mediant fractions. Then, the critique applies an inappropriate rationale of random samples to the WoS population which, in first approximation, proceeds from a Bradfordian selection, except for the low tail. A real problem however is the arbitrary length of this low tail in database producers' decision, which particularly affects the publication and impact measures (Zitt et al. 2003), whatever the “side” of normalization. Influence measures may be less sensitive to this issue.

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Acknowledgments

The author is indebted to Wolfgang Glänzel, Henry Small, Ronald Rousseau, Pierre-André Zitt for helpful discussion and suggestions. Errors remain the responsibility of the author.

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  1. Lereco U-1134, SAE2 Department, INRA, Nantes, France

    M. Zitt

  2. Observatoire des Sciences et des Techniques (OST), Paris, France

    M. Zitt

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Zitt, M. Behind citing-side normalization of citations: some properties of the journal impact factor. Scientometrics 89, 329–344 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-011-0441-7

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