Johan Bollen, Marko A. Rodriguez, and Herbert Van de Sompel "Journal Status" arXiv:cs.GL/0601030 v1 9 Jan 2006

[Loet Leydesdorff]

Dear colleagues,

The idea is interesting. However, there a few problems with this paper.
First, the authors should not have used Pearson correlation coefficients to
compare the rankings, but rank correlations (Spearman's rho or Kendall's
tau). Second, it would have been interesting to have a rank correlation with
"total cites" given recent discussions (Bensman). Third, the delineation of
fields in terms of the ISI subject categories is very questionnable.

However, the authors are very clear about their results: "We identified ...
, but were unable to recognize a meaningful pattern in the results." (p. 9).
I don't understand why one should then multiply the one measure with the
other. What does multiplication to the error?

Does one of you know a place where the ISI subject categories are justified?
How are they produced? People seem to use them increasingly both in
evaluation and research practices, but I have never been able to reproduce
them using journal citation measures.

With best wishes,


Loet


________________________________
Loet Leydesdorff
Amsterdam School of Communications Research (ASCoR),
Kloveniersburgwal 48, 1012 CX Amsterdam.
Tel.: +31-20- 525 6598; fax: +31-20- 525 3681;
loet at leydesdorff.net ; http://www.leydesdorff.net/



> -----Original Message-----
> From: ASIS&T Special Interest Group on Metrics
> [mailto:SIGMETRICS at LISTSERV.UTK.EDU] On Behalf Of Eugene Garfield
> Sent: Friday, March 03, 2006 6:37 PM
> To: SIGMETRICS at LISTSERV.UTK.EDU
> Subject: [SIGMETRICS] Johan Bollen, Marko A. Rodriguez, and
> Herbert Van de Sompel "Journal Status" arXiv:cs.GL/0601030 v1
> 9 Jan 2006
>
> Adminstrative info for SIGMETRICS (for example unsubscribe):
> http://web.utk.edu/~gwhitney/sigmetrics.html
>
> Further to yesterday's posting, "Prestige is factored into
> journal ratings", here is another interesting and informative article
>
> FULL TEXT AVAILABLE AT :
> http://www.arxiv.org/PS_cache/cs/pdf/0601/0601030.pdf
>
> email: {jbollen, marko, herbertv}@lanl.gov
>
> TITLE   :  Journal Status
>
> AUTHORS :  Johan Bollen, Marko A. Rodriguez, and Herbert Van de Sompel
>
> SOURCE   : arXiv:cs.GL/0601030 v1 9 Jan 2006
>
> Abstract
> The status of an actor in a social context is commonly
> defined in terms of two factors: the total number of
> endorsements the actor receives from other actors and the
> prestige of the endorsing actors. These two factors indicate
> the distinction between popularity and expert appreciation of
> the actor, respectively. We refer to the former as popularity
> and to the latter as prestige. These notions of popularity
> and prestige also apply to the domain of scholarly
> assessment. The ISI Impact Factor (ISI IF) is defined as the
> mean number of citations a journal receives over a 2 year
> period. By merely counting the amount of citations and
> disregarding the prestige of the citing journals, the ISI IF
> is a metric of popularity, not of prestige. We demonstrate
> how a weighted version of the popular PageRank algorithm can
> be used to obtain a metric that reflects prestige. We
> contrast the rankings of journals according to their ISI IF
> and their weighted PageRank, and we provide an analysis that
> reveals both significant overlaps and differences.
> Furthermore, we introduce the Y-factor which is a simple
> combination of both the ISI IF and the weighted PageRank, and
> find that the resulting journal rankings correspond well to a
> general understanding of journal status.
>
>
> ______________________________________________
>
>
> Adminstrative info for SIGMETRICS (for example unsubscribe):
> http://web.utk.edu/~gwhitney/sigmetrics.html
>
> FULL TEXT AVAILABLE AT :
> http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v439/n7078/pdf/439770a.pdf    OR
> http://guide.labanimal.com/news/2006/060213/full/439770a.html
>
>
> Philip Ball : p.ball at nature.com
> www.philipball.com
>
> Title: Prestige is factored into journal ratings
>
> Author(s): Ball P
>
> Source: NATURE 439 (7078): 770-771 FEB 16 2006
>
> Document Type: News Item Language: English
> Cited References: 0      Times Cited: 0
>
> Publisher: NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP, MACMILLAN BUILDING, 4
> CRINAN ST, LONDON
> N1 9XW, ENGLAND
> Subject Category: MULTIDISCIPLINARY SCIENCES IDS Number: 012JA
>
> ISSN: 0028-0836
>