2014/02/25 by Pablo Dorta–González, Dorta-Gonzalez, Pablo, María Isabel Dorta-González +5
Decision Sciences · #Digital Libraries (cs.DL) #FOS: Computer and information sciences #scientometrics and bibliometrics research
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1402.6317
openalex publication_date 2014/02/25 · openalex created_date 2022/10/06 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
The journal impact factor is not comparable among fields of science and\nsocial science because of systematic differences in publication and citation\nbehaviour across disciplines. In this work, a source normalization of the\njournal impact factor is proposed. We use the aggregate impact factor of the\nciting journals as a measure of the citation potential in the journal topic,\nand we employ this citation potential in the normalization of the journal\nimpact factor to make it comparable between scientific fields. An empirical\napplication comparing some impact indicators with our topic normalized impact\nfactor in a set of 224 journals from four different fields shows that our\nnormalization, using the citation potential in the journal topic, reduces the\nbetween-group variance with respect to the within-group variance in a higher\nproportion than the rest of indicators analysed. The effect of journal\nself-citations over the normalization process is also studied.\n