The Citation Impact of German Sociology Journals: Some Problems with the Use of Scientometric Indicators in Journal and Research Evaluations (preprint)

[Loet Leydesdorff]

The Citation Impact of German Sociology Journals:
<http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2541908> 

Some Problems with the Use of Scientometric Indicators in Journal and
Research Evaluations
<http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2541908> 

 

Loet Leydesdorff and Staša Milojević

 

We analyze the citation impacts ('cited') and citation practices ('citing')
of sociological journals which publish mainly in German, and discuss major
drawbacks of using the journal impact factor (IF) to assess the quality of
these journals. First, sociological literature moves very slowly in terms of
citations, whereas journal impact factors (IF) measure short-term impact at
research fronts. Second, the citation distributions are heavily skewed
because of the so-called Matthew effect (Merton) of cumulative advantages;
one should not use quasi-averages (such as the IF) given this skewness. The
alternative of using non-parametric statistics (e.g., percentiles), however,
requires delineation of the reference sets. We discuss the unsolved problems
in the case of (inter)disciplinary delineations and show empirically the
ecological fallacy in nevertheless attributing journal characteristics to
individual papers. Algorithmic constructs (e.g., the various rankings)
cannot be used for policy or management purposes without validation or
specification of statistical error.

 

Preprint available at
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2541908 

** Apologies for cross-postings

 

  _____  

Loet Leydesdorff 

Emeritus University of Amsterdam
Amsterdam School of Communications Research (ASCoR)

 <mailto:loet at leydesdorff.net> loet at leydesdorff.net ;
<http://www.leydesdorff.net/> http://www.leydesdorff.net/ 
Honorary Professor,  <http://www.sussex.ac.uk/spru/> SPRU, University of
Sussex; 

Guest Professor  <http://www.zju.edu.cn/english/> Zhejiang Univ., Hangzhou;
Visiting Professor,  <http://www.istic.ac.cn/Eng/brief_en.html> ISTIC,
Beijing;

Visiting Professor,  <http://www.bbk.ac.uk/> Birkbeck, University of London;


 <http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=ych9gNYAAAAJ&hl=en>
http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=ych9gNYAAAAJ&hl=en

 

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