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A comparison of two ways of evaluating research units working in different scientific fields

Author

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  • Antonio Perianes-Rodriguez

    (Universidad Carlos III)

  • Javier Ruiz-Castillo

    (Universidad Carlos III)

Abstract

This paper studies the evaluation of research units that publish their output in several scientific fields. A possible solution relies on the prior normalization of the raw citations received by publications in all fields. In a second step, a citation indicator is applied to the units’ field-normalized citation distributions. In this paper, we also study an alternative solution that begins by applying a size- and scale-independent citation impact indicator to the units’ raw citation distributions in all fields. In a second step, the citation impact of any research unit is calculated as the average (weighted by the publication output) of the citation impact that the unit achieves in each field. The two alternatives are confronted using the 500 universities in the 2013 edition of the CWTS Leiden Ranking, whose research output is evaluated according to two citation impact indicators with very different properties. We use a large Web of Science dataset consisting of 3.6 million articles published in the 2005–2008 period, and a classification system distinguishing between 5119 clusters. The main two findings are as follows. Firstly, differences in production and citation practices between the 3332 clusters with more than 250 publications account for 22.5 % of the overall citation inequality. After the standard field-normalization procedure, where cluster mean citations are used as normalization factors, this quantity is reduced to 4.3 %. Secondly, the differences between the university rankings according to the two solutions for the all-sciences aggregation problem are of a small order of magnitude for both citation impact indicators.

Suggested Citation

  • Antonio Perianes-Rodriguez & Javier Ruiz-Castillo, 2016. "A comparison of two ways of evaluating research units working in different scientific fields," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 106(2), pages 539-561, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:scient:v:106:y:2016:i:2:d:10.1007_s11192-015-1801-5
    DOI: 10.1007/s11192-015-1801-5
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Perianes-Rodriguez, Antonio & Ruiz-Castillo, Javier, 2015. "Multiplicative versus fractional counting methods for co-authored publications. The case of the 500 universities in the Leiden Ranking," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 9(4), pages 974-989.
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    14. Perianes-Rodríguez, Antonio & Ruiz-Castillo, Javier, 2015. "An alternative to field-normalization in the aggregation of heterogeneous scientific fields," UC3M Working papers. Economics we1425, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. Departamento de Economía.
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    Cited by:

    1. Albarrán, Pedro & Herrero, Carmen & Ruiz-Castillo, Javier & Villar, Antonio, 2017. "The Herrero-Villar approach to citation impact," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 11(2), pages 625-640.
    2. Heather Keathley-Herring & Eileen Van Aken & Fernando Gonzalez-Aleu & Fernando Deschamps & Geert Letens & Pablo Cardenas Orlandini, 2016. "Assessing the maturity of a research area: bibliometric review and proposed framework," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 109(2), pages 927-951, November.
    3. Wang, Jiang-Pan & Guo, Qiang & Zhou, Lei & Liu, Jian-Guo, 2019. "Dynamic credit allocation for researchers," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 520(C), pages 208-216.

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