2015/01/19 by Ludo Waltman, Nees Jan van Eck, Waltman, Ludo +1 · 3 citations
Decision Sciences · #Digital Libraries (cs.DL) #FOS: Computer and information sciences #scientometrics and bibliometrics research
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1501.04431
openalex publication_date 2015/01/19 · openalex created_date 2022/10/01 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Bibliometric studies often rely on field-normalized citation impact\nindicators in order to make comparisons between scientific fields. We discuss\nthe connection between field normalization and the choice of a counting method\nfor handling publications with multiple co-authors. Our focus is on the choice\nbetween full counting and fractional counting. Based on an extensive\ntheoretical and empirical analysis, we argue that properly field-normalized\nresults cannot be obtained when full counting is used. Fractional counting does\nprovide results that are properly field normalized. We therefore recommend the\nuse of fractional counting in bibliometric studies that require field\nnormalization, especially in studies at the level of countries and research\norganizations. We also compare different variants of fractional counting. In\ngeneral, it seems best to use either the author-level or the address-level\nvariant of fractional counting.\n