skewed citation distributions should not be averaged

[Sylvan Katz]

Loet,

Yes - perhaps something in the order of 20-30 years of Scopus or WoS data 
might be large enough.

Sylvan


--On Wednesday, August 31, 2011 11:08 PM +0200 Loet Leydesdorff 
<loet at LEYDESDORFF.NET> wrote:

> Adminstrative info for SIGMETRICS (for example unsubscribe):
> http://web.utk.edu/~gwhitney/sigmetrics.html
>
>> A closer look at the evolution of the citation distributions over a long
> period of time maybe necessary before a definitive answer can be given to
> the question of whether "Citation distributions are so skewed that using
> the mean or any other central tendency measure is ill-advised."
>
> Dear Silvan,
>
> Wouldn't one need very large samples (N > 10^6) to test this?
> Typically, IFs, for example, are computed over 10^2 - 10^3 citable items.
>
> Best,
> Loet
>



Dr. J. Sylvan Katz, Visiting Fellow
SPRU, University of Sussex
http://www.sussex.ac.uk/Users/sylvank