IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/infome/v7y2013i2p487-504.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Citation and impact factor distributions of scientific journals published in individual countries

Author

Listed:
  • Sangwal, Keshra

Abstract

The distributions of citations L, two- (IF2) and five-year impact factors (IF5), and citation half-lives λ of journals published in different selected countries are analyzed using Langmuir-type relation: yn=y0 {1−αKn/(1+Kn)}, where yn denotes Ln, IF2n or IF5n of n-ranked journal, y0 is the value of yn when journal rank n=0, α is an empirical effectiveness parameter, and K is the Langmuir constant. It was found that: (1) the general features of the distribution of Ln, IF2n or IF5n of the journals published in different individual countries are similar to the results obtained before by the author from the analysis of the citation distribution data of papers of individual authors (K. Sangwal, Journal of Informetrics 7 (2013) 36–49), (2) in contrast to the theoretically expected value of the effectiveness parameter α=1, the calculated values of α>1 for journals published in different countries, (3) the trends of the distribution of cited half-lives λn of journals differ from those of Ln, IF2n and IF5n data for different countries, and show one, two or three linear regions, the longest linear regions with low slopes are observed in the case of countries publishing relatively high number of journals, and (4) the product of the Langmuir constant K and the number N of journals for the processes of citations and two- and five-year impact factors of journals published in different countries is constant for a process. The results suggest that: (1) the values of α>1 are associated with a process that retards the generation of items (i.e. citations or impact factors), the difference (α−1) being related to the dissemination of contents of the journals published by a country, and (2) the constancy of KN is related to the publication potential of a country.

Suggested Citation

  • Sangwal, Keshra, 2013. "Citation and impact factor distributions of scientific journals published in individual countries," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 7(2), pages 487-504.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:infome:v:7:y:2013:i:2:p:487-504
    DOI: 10.1016/j.joi.2013.01.011
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1751157713000138
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.joi.2013.01.011?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. Mansilla, R. & Köppen, E. & Cocho, G. & Miramontes, P., 2007. "On the behavior of journal impact factor rank-order distribution," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 1(2), pages 155-160.
    2. S. Redner, 1998. "How popular is your paper? An empirical study of the citation distribution," The European Physical Journal B: Condensed Matter and Complex Systems, Springer;EDP Sciences, vol. 4(2), pages 131-134, July.
    3. Lokman I. Meho & Yvonne Rogers, 2008. "Citation counting, citation ranking, and h‐index of human‐computer interaction researchers: A comparison of Scopus and Web of Science," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 59(11), pages 1711-1726, September.
    4. Michel Zitt, 2012. "The journal impact factor: angel, devil, or scapegoat? A comment on J.K. Vanclay’s article 2011," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 92(2), pages 485-503, August.
    5. Gregorio González-Alcaide & Juan Carlos Valderrama-Zurián & Rafael Aleixandre-Benavent, 2012. "The Impact Factor in non-English-speaking countries," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 92(2), pages 297-311, August.
    6. Judit Bar-Ilan, 2008. "Which h-index? — A comparison of WoS, Scopus and Google Scholar," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 74(2), pages 257-271, February.
    7. Henk F. Moed & Lisa Colledge & Jan Reedijk & Felix Moya-Anegon & Vicente Guerrero-Bote & Andrew Plume & Mayur Amin, 2012. "Citation-based metrics are appropriate tools in journal assessment provided that they are accurate and used in an informed way," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 92(2), pages 367-376, August.
    8. Vieira, E.S. & Gomes, J.A.N.F., 2010. "Citations to scientific articles: Its distribution and dependence on the article features," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 4(1), pages 1-13.
    9. J Mingers, 2008. "Exploring the dynamics of journal citations: Modelling with s-curves," Journal of the Operational Research Society, Palgrave Macmillan;The OR Society, vol. 59(8), pages 1013-1025, August.
    10. Keshra Sangwal, 2012. "Application of progressive nucleation mechanism for the citation behavior of individual papers of different authors," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 92(3), pages 643-655, September.
    11. Thed Leeuwen, 2012. "Discussing some basic critique on Journal Impact Factors: revision of earlier comments," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 92(2), pages 443-455, August.
    12. Juan Miguel Campanario, 2010. "Distribution of ranks of articles and citations in journals," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 61(2), pages 419-423, February.
    13. Keshra Sangwal, 2012. "On the relationship between citations of publication output and Hirsch index h of authors: conceptualization of tapered Hirsch index h T, circular citation area radius R and citation acceleration a," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 93(3), pages 987-1004, December.
    14. John Mingers & Evangelia A. E. C. G. Lipitakis, 2010. "Counting the citations: a comparison of Web of Science and Google Scholar in the field of business and management," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 85(2), pages 613-625, November.
    15. Bárbara S. Lancho-Barrantes & Vicente P. Guerrero-Bote & Félix Moya-Anegón, 2010. "The iceberg hypothesis revisited," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 85(2), pages 443-461, November.
    16. Wallace, Matthew L. & Larivière, Vincent & Gingras, Yves, 2009. "Modeling a century of citation distributions," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 3(4), pages 296-303.
    17. Gualberto Buela-Casal & Izabela Zych, 2012. "What do the scientists think about the impact factor?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 92(2), pages 281-292, August.
    18. Sangwal, Keshra, 2013. "Comparison of different mathematical functions for the analysis of citation distribution of papers of individual authors," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 7(1), pages 36-49.
    19. A. I. Pudovkin & Eugene Garfield, 2012. "Rank normalization of impact factors will resolve Vanclay’s dilemma with TRIF," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 92(2), pages 409-412, August.
    20. Mikhail V. Simkin & Vwani P. Roychowdhury, 2007. "A mathematical theory of citing," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 58(11), pages 1661-1673, September.
    21. Franceschet, Massimo, 2010. "Journal influence factors," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 4(3), pages 239-248.
    22. Thed N. van Leeuwen & Henk F. Moed, 2002. "Development and application of journal impact measures in the Dutch science system," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 53(2), pages 249-266, February.
    23. Jerome K. Vanclay, 2012. "Impact factor: outdated artefact or stepping-stone to journal certification?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 92(2), pages 211-238, August.
    24. Juan Miguel Campanario, 2011. "Empirical study of journal impact factors obtained using the classical two-year citation window versus a five-year citation window," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 87(1), pages 189-204, April.
    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. Fabio Zagonari, 2019. "Scientific Production and Productivity for Characterizing an Author’s Publication History: Simple and Nested Gini’s and Hirsch’s Indexes Combined," Publications, MDPI, vol. 7(2), pages 1-30, May.
    2. Campanario, Juan Miguel, 2014. "Analysis of the distribution of cited journals according to their positions in the h-core of citing journal listed in Journal Citation Reports," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 8(3), pages 534-545.
    3. Keshra Sangwal, 2013. "Some citation-related characteristics of scientific journals published in individual countries," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 97(3), pages 719-741, December.
    4. Gerson Pech & Catarina Delgado, 2020. "Assessing the publication impact using citation data from both Scopus and WoS databases: an approach validated in 15 research fields," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 125(2), pages 909-924, November.
    5. Sangwal, Keshra, 2014. "Distributions of citations of papers of individual authors publishing in different scientific disciplines: Application of Langmuir-type function," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 8(4), pages 972-984.

    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. Keshra Sangwal, 2013. "Some citation-related characteristics of scientific journals published in individual countries," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 97(3), pages 719-741, December.
    2. Waltman, Ludo, 2016. "A review of the literature on citation impact indicators," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 10(2), pages 365-391.
    3. Sangwal, Keshra, 2013. "Comparison of different mathematical functions for the analysis of citation distribution of papers of individual authors," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 7(1), pages 36-49.
    4. Sangwal, Keshra, 2014. "Distributions of citations of papers of individual authors publishing in different scientific disciplines: Application of Langmuir-type function," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 8(4), pages 972-984.
    5. Mingers, John & Leydesdorff, Loet, 2015. "A review of theory and practice in scientometrics," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 246(1), pages 1-19.
    6. Bertoli-Barsotti, Lucio & Lando, Tommaso, 2015. "On a formula for the h-index," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 9(4), pages 762-776.
    7. Mingers, John & Yang, Liying, 2017. "Evaluating journal quality: A review of journal citation indicators and ranking in business and management," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 257(1), pages 323-337.
    8. Peter Jacso, 2012. "Grim tales about the impact factor and the h-index in the Web of Science and the Journal Citation Reports databases: reflections on Vanclay’s criticism," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 92(2), pages 325-354, August.
    9. David I. Stern, 2013. "Uncertainty Measures for Economics Journal Impact Factors," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 51(1), pages 173-189, March.
    10. Finardi, Ugo, 2013. "Correlation between Journal Impact Factor and Citation Performance: An experimental study," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 7(2), pages 357-370.
    11. Juan Miguel Campanario, 2018. "Are leaders really leading? Journals that are first in Web of Science subject categories in the context of their groups," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 115(1), pages 111-130, April.
    12. Juan Miguel Campanario, 2014. "The effect of citations on the significance of decimal places in the computation of journal impact factors," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 99(2), pages 289-298, May.
    13. Antonia Ferrer-Sapena & Susana Díaz-Novillo & Enrique A. Sánchez-Pérez, 2017. "Measuring Time-Dynamics and Time-Stability of Journal Rankings in Mathematics and Physics by Means of Fractional p -Variations," Publications, MDPI, vol. 5(3), pages 1-14, September.
    14. Stegehuis, Clara & Litvak, Nelly & Waltman, Ludo, 2015. "Predicting the long-term citation impact of recent publications," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 9(3), pages 642-657.
    15. Stuart Brody, 2013. "Impact factor: Imperfect but not yet replaceable," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 96(1), pages 255-257, July.
    16. Juan Miguel Campanario, 2011. "Empirical study of journal impact factors obtained using the classical two-year citation window versus a five-year citation window," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 87(1), pages 189-204, April.
    17. Huang, Ding-wei, 2017. "Impact factor distribution revisited," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 482(C), pages 173-180.
    18. Thelwall, Mike & Sud, Pardeep, 2016. "National, disciplinary and temporal variations in the extent to which articles with more authors have more impact: Evidence from a geometric field normalised citation indicator," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 10(1), pages 48-61.
    19. Thelwall, Mike, 2016. "Are the discretised lognormal and hooked power law distributions plausible for citation data?," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 10(2), pages 454-470.
    20. de Carvalho, Gustavo Dambiski Gomes & Sokulski, Carla Cristiane & da Silva, Wesley Vieira & de Carvalho, Hélio Gomes & de Moura, Rafael Vignoli & de Francisco, Antonio Carlos & da Veiga, Claudimar Per, 2020. "Bibliometrics and systematic reviews: A comparison between the Proknow-C and the Methodi Ordinatio," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 14(3).

    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:7:y:2013:i:2:p:487-504. 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.