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Author-weighted impact factor and reference return ratio: can we attain more equality among fields?

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Abstracts

Despite its problems, journal impact factor (JIF) is the most popular journal quality metric. In this paper, two simple adjustments of JIF are tested to see whether more equality among fields can be attained. In author-weighted impact factor (AWIF), the number of citations that a journal receive is divided by the number of authors in that journal. In reference return ratio (RRR), the number of citations that a journal receive is divided by the number of references in that journal. We compute JIF, AWIF and RRR of all 10,848 journals included in journal citation report 2012. Science journals outperform social science journals at JIF but social science journals outperform science journals at both AWIF and RRR. Highest level of equality between science and social science journals is attained when AWIF is used. These findings cannot be generalized when narrower subject categories are considered.

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Notes

  1. The names of the group authors are also given in this column. For example, there are 1067 articles that have more than 100 authors in 2010 and 2011. Consequently, we are able to include articles with group authors in our calculations.

  2. We also do not take distinct number of articles in the cited-references. For example if the same article is cited in Journal X in three different articles, then that cited-article will be counted three times.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Economics, Faculty of Management, Istanbul Technical University, 34367, Macka, Istanbul, Turkey

    Tolga Yuret

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  1. Tolga Yuret
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Correspondence to Tolga Yuret.

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Yuret, T. Author-weighted impact factor and reference return ratio: can we attain more equality among fields?. Scientometrics 116, 2097–2111 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-018-2806-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-018-2806-7

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