Indicators of the Interdisciplinarity of Journals; preprint version

[Loet Leydesdorff]

Indicators of the Interdisciplinarity of Journals: Diversity, Centrality,
and Citations

Authors: Loet  <http://arxiv.org/find/cs/1/au:+Leydesdorff_L/0/1/0/all/0/1>
Leydesdorff, Ismael  <http://arxiv.org/find/cs/1/au:+Rafols_I/0/1/0/all/0/1>
Rafols
(Submitted on 18 Mar 2010)

Abstract: A citation-based indicator for interdisciplinarity has been
missing hitherto among the set of available journal indicators. In this
study, we investigate betweenness centrality, entropy, the Gini coefficient,
and more recently proposed measures for diversity that combine the
statistics of vectors and distances in networks, in terms of their potential
to fill this gap. The effects of various normalizations are specified and
measured using the matrix of 8,207 journals contained in the Journal
Citation Reports of the (Social) Science Citation Index. Betweenness
centrality in (1-mode) affiliations networks provides an indicator
outperforming betweenness in the (2-mode) citation network. Entropy as a
vector-based indicator performs better than the Gini coefficient, but is
sensitive to size. Science and Nature, for example, are indicated at the top
of the list. The new diversity measure provides reasonable results when (1 -
cosine) is assumed as a measure for the distance, but results using
Euclidean distances are difficult to interpret. 

Subjects: 	Digital Libraries (cs.DL); Physics and Society
(physics.soc-ph)	
Cite as: 	arXiv:1003.3613v1 <http://arxiv.org/abs/1003.3613v1>
[cs.DL]	
 
  _____  

Loet Leydesdorff 
Amsterdam School of Communications Research (ASCoR)
Kloveniersburgwal 48, 1012 CX Amsterdam.
Tel. +31-20-525 6598; fax: +31-842239111
 <mailto:loet at leydesdorff.net> loet at leydesdorff.net ;
<http://www.leydesdorff.net/> http://www.leydesdorff.net/ 


Visiting Professor 2007-2010,  <http://www.istic.ac.cn/Eng/brief_en.html>
ISTIC, Beijing; Honorary Fellow 2007-2010,  <http://www.sussex.ac.uk/spru/>
SPRU, University of Sussex 
Now available:
<http://www.universal-publishers.com/book.php?method=ISBN&book=1581129378>
The Knowledge-Based Economy: Modeled, Measured, Simulated, 385 pp.; US$
18.95;
 <http://www.universal-publishers.com/book.php?method=ISBN&book=1581126956>
The Self-Organization of the Knowledge-Based Society ;
<http://www.universal-publishers.com/book.php?method=ISBN&book=1581126816>
The Challenge of Scientometrics

 
 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.asis.org/pipermail/sigmetrics/attachments/20100319/f6299c48/attachment.html>