IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/infome/v6y2012i2p298-306.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A sensitivity analysis of research institutions’ productivity rankings to the time of citation observation

Author

Listed:
  • Abramo, Giovanni
  • Cicero, Tindaro
  • D’Angelo, Ciriaco Andrea

Abstract

One of the critical issues in bibliometric research assessments is the time required to achieve maturity in citations. Citation counts can be considered a reliable proxy of the real impact of a work only if they are observed after sufficient time has passed from publication date. In the present work the authors investigate the effect of varying the time of citation observation on accuracy of productivity rankings for research institutions. Research productivity measures are calculated for all Italian universities active in the hard sciences in the 2001–2003 period, by individual field and discipline, with the time of the citation observation varying from 2004 to 2008. The objective is to support policy-makers in choosing a citation window that optimizes the tradeoff between accuracy of rankings and timeliness of the exercise.

Suggested Citation

  • Abramo, Giovanni & Cicero, Tindaro & D’Angelo, Ciriaco Andrea, 2012. "A sensitivity analysis of research institutions’ productivity rankings to the time of citation observation," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 6(2), pages 298-306.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:infome:v:6:y:2012:i:2:p:298-306
    DOI: 10.1016/j.joi.2011.11.005
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1751157711001040
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.joi.2011.11.005?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Giovanni Abramo & Ciriaco Andrea D'Angelo & Flavia Di Costa, 2008. "Assessment of sectoral aggregation distortion in research productivity measurements," Research Evaluation, Oxford University Press, vol. 17(2), pages 111-121, June.
    2. Jonathan Adams, 2005. "Early citation counts correlate with accumulated impact," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 63(3), pages 567-581, June.
    3. Thed N. Van Leeuwen & Henk F. Moed & Robert J. W. Tijssen & Martijn S. Visser & Anthony F. J. Van Raan, 2001. "Language biases in the coverage of the Science Citation Index and its consequencesfor international comparisons of national research performance," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 51(1), pages 335-346, April.
    4. Lundberg, Jonas, 2007. "Lifting the crown—citation z-score," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 1(2), pages 145-154.
    5. Wolfgang Glänzel & Balázs Schlemmer & Bart Thijs, 2003. "Better late than never? On the chance to become highly cited only beyond the standard bibliometric time horizon," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 58(3), pages 571-586, November.
    6. Abramo, Giovanni & Cicero, Tindaro & D’Angelo, Ciriaco Andrea, 2011. "A field-standardized application of DEA to national-scale research assessment of universities," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 5(4), pages 618-628.
    7. Abramo, Giovanni & Cicero, Tindaro & D’Angelo, Ciriaco Andrea, 2011. "Assessing the varying level of impact measurement accuracy as a function of the citation window length," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 5(4), pages 659-667.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Marcel Clermont & Alexander Dirksen & Barbara Scheidt & Dirk Tunger, 2017. "Citation metrics as an additional indicator for evaluating research performance? An analysis of their correlations and validity," Business Research, Springer;German Academic Association for Business Research, vol. 10(2), pages 249-279, October.
    2. Giovanni Abramo & Ciriaco Andrea D’Angelo, 2014. "How do you define and measure research productivity?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 101(2), pages 1129-1144, November.
    3. Jian Wang, 2013. "Citation time window choice for research impact evaluation," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 94(3), pages 851-872, March.
    4. Abramo, Giovanni & D’Angelo, Ciriaco Andrea, 2015. "Ranking research institutions by the number of highly-cited articles per scientist," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 9(4), pages 915-923.
    5. Dalibor Fiala, 2013. "Science Evaluation in the Czech Republic: The Case of Universities," Societies, MDPI, vol. 3(3), pages 1-14, June.
    6. Giovanni Abramo & Ciriaco Andrea D’Angelo & Fulvio Viel, 2013. "The suitability of h and g indexes for measuring the research performance of institutions," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 97(3), pages 555-570, December.
    7. Giovanni Abramo & Ciriaco Andrea D’Angelo & Tindaro Cicero, 2012. "What is the appropriate length of the publication period over which to assess research performance?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 93(3), pages 1005-1017, December.
    8. Waltman, Ludo, 2016. "A review of the literature on citation impact indicators," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 10(2), pages 365-391.
    9. Wang, Xing & Zhang, Zhihui, 2020. "Improving the reliability of short-term citation impact indicators by taking into account the correlation between short- and long-term citation impact," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 14(2).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Waltman, Ludo, 2016. "A review of the literature on citation impact indicators," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 10(2), pages 365-391.
    2. Bar-Ilan, Judit, 2008. "Informetrics at the beginning of the 21st century—A review," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 2(1), pages 1-52.
    3. Abramo, Giovanni, 2018. "Revisiting the scientometric conceptualization of impact and its measurement," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 12(3), pages 590-597.
    4. Abramo, Giovanni & Cicero, Tindaro & D’Angelo, Ciriaco Andrea, 2012. "A sensitivity analysis of researchers’ productivity rankings to the time of citation observation," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 6(2), pages 192-201.
    5. Marcel Clermont & Johanna Krolak & Dirk Tunger, 2021. "Does the citation period have any effect on the informative value of selected citation indicators in research evaluations?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(2), pages 1019-1047, February.
    6. Jian Wang, 2013. "Citation time window choice for research impact evaluation," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 94(3), pages 851-872, March.
    7. Guoliang Lyu & Ganwei Shi, 2019. "On an approach to boosting a journal’s citation potential," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 120(3), pages 1387-1409, September.
    8. Abramo, Giovanni & D’Angelo, Ciriaco Andrea & Felici, Giovanni, 2019. "Predicting publication long-term impact through a combination of early citations and journal impact factor," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 13(1), pages 32-49.
    9. Giovanni Abramo & Ciriaco Andrea D’Angelo & Tindaro Cicero, 2012. "What is the appropriate length of the publication period over which to assess research performance?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 93(3), pages 1005-1017, December.
    10. Abramo, Giovanni & Cicero, Tindaro & D’Angelo, Ciriaco Andrea, 2012. "The dispersion of research performance within and between universities as a potential indicator of the competitive intensity in higher education systems," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 6(2), pages 155-168.
    11. Giovanni Abramo & Ciriaco Andrea D’Angelo & Francesco Rosati, 2014. "Relatives in the same university faculty: nepotism or merit?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 101(1), pages 737-749, October.
    12. Abramo, Giovanni & D’Angelo, Ciriaco Andrea & Rosati, Francesco, 2013. "The importance of accounting for the number of co-authors and their order when assessing research performance at the individual level in the life sciences," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 7(1), pages 198-208.
    13. David L. Anderson & John Tressler, 2016. "Citation-Capture Rates for Economics Journals: Do they Differ from Other Disciplines and Does it Matter?," Economic Papers, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 35(1), pages 73-85, March.
    14. Giovanni Abramo & Ciriaco Andrea D’Angelo & Flavia Di Costa, 2011. "A national-scale cross-time analysis of university research performance," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 87(2), pages 399-413, May.
    15. Fairclough, Ruth & Thelwall, Mike, 2015. "National research impact indicators from Mendeley readers," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 9(4), pages 845-859.
    16. Thelwall, Mike, 2018. "Do females create higher impact research? Scopus citations and Mendeley readers for articles from five countries," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 12(4), pages 1031-1041.
    17. David L. Anderson & John Tressler, 2014. "Citation-Capture Rates by Economic Journals:Do they Differ from Other Disciplines and Does it Matter?," Working Papers in Economics 14/10, University of Waikato.
    18. Abramo, Giovanni & Cicero, Tindaro & D’Angelo, Ciriaco Andrea, 2011. "Assessing the varying level of impact measurement accuracy as a function of the citation window length," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 5(4), pages 659-667.
    19. Zhihui Zhang & Ying Cheng & Nian Cai Liu, 2015. "Improving the normalization effect of mean-based method from the perspective of optimization: optimization-based linear methods and their performance," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 102(1), pages 587-607, January.
    20. Abramo, Giovanni & Cicero, Tindaro & D’Angelo, Ciriaco Andrea, 2014. "Are the authors of highly cited articles also the most productive ones?," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 8(1), pages 89-97.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:infome:v:6:y:2012:i:2:p:298-306. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/joi .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.