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Assessing the relative influence of journals in a citation network

Published: 01 November 2005 Publication History

Abstract

Some journals are perceived as sources of knowledge; others serve as storers of knowledge. Learning the strengths and persuasions of journals is of value to academia, scholars, and publishers.

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Cited By

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  • (2020)Predicting future influence of papers, researchers, and venues in a dynamic academic networkJournal of Informetrics10.1016/j.joi.2020.10103514:2(101035)Online publication date: May-2020
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Reviews

John A. Fulcher

This is the latest article in a series concerned with journal citations that has appeared in Communications of the ACM ( CACM ) over the past decade. As with the previous articles [1,2,3], the range of journals selected by Nerur and his co-authors is broad indeed, but somewhat biased toward management information systems. The end result is a rather eclectic selection that spans management, information systems (IS), computer science (CS), databases, artificial intelligence (AI), decision support (DS), software engineering (SE), and more. I personally cannot think of a single academic colleague who would regularly peruse the 27 journals listed here. To be fair, the authors have been guided by the previous CACM studies. Nevertheless, I would be much more interested in results obtained on a subset of this journal list. That said, let us now turn our attention to the findings of Nerur et al. Their focus is on relative journal influence, which they attempt to quantify by identifying knowledge sources and storers in a citation network. They further consider the reciprocity (mutual influence) of citation flows. Given the inherent limitations of raw citation measures, the authors choose a log-multiplicative measure to control for such biases. For the nominated journals, Nerur et al. generate a 27-by-27 matrix from articles referenced between 1998 and 2002 in the science and social science citation indexes, using the ISI Web of Knowledge database. As with the previous studies, CACM was found to be the most influential source; in other words, it was the publication most cited by other journals (after controlling for self-citations and the number of citations sent by CACM to other journals in the network). The authors use a log-multiplicative model with multiple dimensions of association, similar to one used in a previous study of economics journals [4]. They are able to identify primary knowledge sources (cited journals) and storers (citing journals). Moreover, an application of Ward's hierarchical clustering technique first extracted two broad categories (sociotechnical and technical), and the following five dimensions (sub-clusters): European, North American, computational intelligence, techno-centric, and computer science. This article focuses less on the journal rankings themselves, and more on their relative influence, using the measures outlined above. While the authors' findings possess a certain inherent interest, their usefulness is somewhat restricted, due to their aggregated nature. Indeed, it would be very interesting to see a follow-up study performed that maps journals related to a specific model curriculum, in particular those jointly developed by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Computer Society (IEEE-CS). Online Computing Reviews Service

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Published In

cover image Communications of the ACM
Communications of the ACM  Volume 48, Issue 11
November 2005
87 pages
ISSN:0001-0782
EISSN:1557-7317
DOI:10.1145/1096000
Issue’s Table of Contents
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 01 November 2005
Published in CACM Volume 48, Issue 11

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Cited By

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  • (2024)Anatomising the impact of ResearchGate followers and followings on influence identificationJournal of Information Science10.1177/0165551522110071650:3(607-624)Online publication date: 1-Jun-2024
  • (2022)Promise of AI in DeFi, a Systematic ReviewDigital10.3390/digital20100062:1(88-103)Online publication date: 12-Mar-2022
  • (2020)Predicting future influence of papers, researchers, and venues in a dynamic academic networkJournal of Informetrics10.1016/j.joi.2020.10103514:2(101035)Online publication date: May-2020
  • (2020)Dynamic evaluation of the influence of drafting units in China’s air quality standards networkJournal of Cleaner Production10.1016/j.jclepro.2019.119834252(119834)Online publication date: Apr-2020
  • (2020)Regional Innovation Ecosystems: Tuning the Regional Engine’s Helix Through Smart SpecializationRegional Helix Ecosystems and Sustainable Growth10.1007/978-3-030-47697-7_7(107-124)Online publication date: 30-Aug-2020
  • (2019)A Complex Network Method in Criticality Evaluation of Air Quality StandardsSustainability10.3390/su1114392011:14(3920)Online publication date: 18-Jul-2019
  • (2018)Ranking the Future Influence of Scientific Literatures2018 IEEE 4th International Conference on Computer and Communications (ICCC)10.1109/CompComm.2018.8780635(2362-2371)Online publication date: Dec-2018
  • (2018)Stochastic block model reveals maps of citation patterns and their evolution in timeJournal of Informetrics10.1016/j.joi.2018.05.00412:3(757-783)Online publication date: Aug-2018
  • (2018)Analyzing the impact of news trends on research publications and scientific collaboration networksConcurrency and Computation: Practice and Experience10.1002/cpe.505831:14Online publication date: 28-Nov-2018
  • (2017)Engaging scientometrics in information systemsJournal of Information Technology10.1057/jit.2015.2932:1(85-109)Online publication date: 1-Mar-2017
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