Lancho-Barrantes, BS; Guerrero-Bote, VP; Moya-Anegon, F. 2010. What lies behind the averages and significance of citation indicators in different disciplines?. JOURNAL OF INFORMATION SCIENCE 36 (3): 371-3

[Eugene Garfield]

Lancho-Barrantes, BS; Guerrero-Bote, VP; Moya-Anegon, F. 2010. What lies 
behind the averages and significance of citation indicators in different 
disciplines?. JOURNAL OF INFORMATION SCIENCE 36 (3): 371-382.

Author Full Name(s): Lancho-Barrantes, Barbara S.; Guerrero-Bote, Vicente P.; 
Moya-Anegon, Felix

Language: English
Document Type: Article

Abstract: The limitations of citation-based indicators include a lack of 
coverage, no normalization with respect to the length of reference lists (with a 
potential bias in favour of reviews), and different citation habits. As a 
consequence, the distributions of the indicators are not comparable across 
different disciplines. Here we show that the most popular journal citation 
indicators used in quality assessment - the journal impact factors of Thomson 
Scientific and the scientific journal rankings of Scopus - are strongly correlated 
with the proportion of within-database references, and even more so with the 
number of within-database recent references per paper. No significant 
correlations were found with other bibliometric magnitudes. We anticipate that 
these results will be a starting point for more sophisticated indicator models 
that take this dependence into account, and for the design of strategies aimed 
at extending such bibliometric databases as Thomson Scientific's Science 
Citation Index or Elsevier's Scopus to improve their capacity to evaluate all 
sciences.

Addresses: [Guerrero-Bote, Vicente P.] Univ Extremadura, Dept Informac & 
Comunicac, Grp Scimago, E-06071 Badajoz, Spain; [Moya-Anegon, Felix] CSIC, 
CCHS, IPP, Grp Scimago, Madrid, Spain

Reprint Address: Guerrero-Bote, VP, Univ Extremadura, Dept Informac & 
Comunicac, Grp Scimago, E-06071 Badajoz, Spain.

E-mail Address: guerrero at unex.es

ISSN: 0165-5515
DOI: 10.1177/0165551510366077
URL: http://jis.sagepub.com/content/36/3/371.abstract