IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/infome/v8y2014i4p985-996.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The correlation between citation-based and expert-based assessments of publication channels: SNIP and SJR vs. Norwegian quality assessments

Author

Listed:
  • Ahlgren, Per
  • Waltman, Ludo

Abstract

We study the correlation between citation-based and expert-based assessments of journals and series, which we collectively refer to as sources. The source normalized impact per paper (SNIP), the Scimago Journal Rank 2 (SJR2) and the raw impact per paper (RIP) indicators are used to assess sources based on their citations, while the Norwegian model is used to obtain expert-based source assessments. We first analyze – within different subject area categories and across such categories – the degree to which RIP, SNIP and SJR2 values correlate with the quality levels in the Norwegian model. We find that sources at higher quality levels on average have substantially higher RIP, SNIP, and SJR2 values. Regarding subject area categories, SNIP seems to perform substantially better than SJR2 from the field normalization point of view. We then compare the ability of RIP, SNIP and SJR2 to predict whether a source is classified at the highest quality level in the Norwegian model or not. SNIP and SJR2 turn out to give more accurate predictions than RIP, which provides evidence that normalizing for differences in citation practices between scientific fields indeed improves the accuracy of citation indicators.

Suggested Citation

  • Ahlgren, Per & Waltman, Ludo, 2014. "The correlation between citation-based and expert-based assessments of publication channels: SNIP and SJR vs. Norwegian quality assessments," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 8(4), pages 985-996.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:infome:v:8:y:2014:i:4:p:985-996
    DOI: 10.1016/j.joi.2014.09.010
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1751157714000911
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.joi.2014.09.010?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. Loet Leydesdorff & Lutz Bornmann, 2011. "How fractional counting of citations affects the impact factor: Normalization in terms of differences in citation potentials among fields of science," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 62(2), pages 217-229, February.
    2. Christoph Neuhaus & Hans-Dieter Daniel, 2009. "A new reference standard for citation analysis in chemistry and related fields based on the sections of Chemical Abstracts," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 78(2), pages 219-229, February.
    3. Zitt, Michel, 2010. "Citing-side normalization of journal impact: A robust variant of the Audience Factor," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 4(3), pages 392-406.
    4. Guerrero-Bote, Vicente P. & Moya-Anegón, Félix, 2012. "A further step forward in measuring journals’ scientific prestige: The SJR2 indicator," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 6(4), pages 674-688.
    5. Waltman, Ludo & van Eck, Nees Jan & van Leeuwen, Thed N. & Visser, Martijn S. & van Raan, Anthony F.J., 2011. "Towards a new crown indicator: Some theoretical considerations," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 5(1), pages 37-47.
    6. Loet Leydesdorff & Jung C. Shin, 2011. "How to evaluate universities in terms of their relative citation impacts: Fractional counting of citations and the normalization of differences among disciplines," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 62(6), pages 1146-1155, June.
    7. Michel Zitt & Henry Small, 2008. "Modifying the journal impact factor by fractional citation weighting: The audience factor," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 59(11), pages 1856-1860, September.
    8. Ludo Waltman & Nees Jan Eck, 2013. "Source normalized indicators of citation impact: an overview of different approaches and an empirical comparison," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 96(3), pages 699-716, September.
    9. Per Ahlgren & Cristian Colliander & Olle Persson, 2012. "Field normalized citation rates, field normalized journal impact and Norwegian weights for allocation of university research funds," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 92(3), pages 767-780, September.
    10. Serenko, Alexander & Dohan, Michael, 2011. "Comparing the expert survey and citation impact journal ranking methods: Example from the field of Artificial Intelligence," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 5(4), pages 629-648.
    11. Thed N. van Leeuwen & Clara Calero Medina, 2012. "Redefining the field of economics: Improving field normalization for the application of bibliometric techniques in the field of economics," Research Evaluation, Oxford University Press, vol. 21(1), pages 61-70, February.
    12. Ludo Waltman & Nees Jan Eck & Thed N. Leeuwen & Martijn S. Visser & Anthony F. J. Raan, 2011. "Towards a new crown indicator: an empirical analysis," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 87(3), pages 467-481, June.
    13. Vanclay, Jerome K., 2011. "An evaluation of the Australian Research Council's journal ranking," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 5(2), pages 265-274.
    14. Michel Zitt & Suzy Ramanana-Rahary & Elise Bassecoulard, 2005. "Relativity of citation performance and excellence measures: From cross-field to cross-scale effects of field-normalisation," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 63(2), pages 373-401, April.
    15. Waltman, Ludo & van Eck, Nees Jan & van Leeuwen, Thed N. & Visser, Martijn S., 2013. "Some modifications to the SNIP journal impact indicator," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 7(2), pages 272-285.
    16. Ludo Waltman & Rodrigo Costas, 2014. "F1000 Recommendations as a Potential New Data Source for Research Evaluation: A Comparison With Citations," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 65(3), pages 433-445, March.
    17. Moed, Henk F., 2010. "Measuring contextual citation impact of scientific journals," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 4(3), pages 265-277.
    18. Wolfgang Glänzel & András Schubert & Bart Thijs & Koenraad Debackere, 2011. "A priori vs. a posteriori normalisation of citation indicators. The case of journal ranking," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 87(2), pages 415-424, May.
    19. González-Pereira, Borja & Guerrero-Bote, Vicente P. & Moya-Anegón, Félix, 2010. "A new approach to the metric of journals’ scientific prestige: The SJR indicator," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 4(3), pages 379-391.
    20. Yan, Erjia & Guns, Raf, 2014. "Predicting and recommending collaborations: An author-, institution-, and country-level analysis," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 8(2), pages 295-309.
    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. A. Ferrer-Sapena & E. A. Sánchez-Pérez & L. M. González & F. Peset & R. Aleixandre-Benavent, 2015. "Mathematical properties of weighted impact factors based on measures of prestige of the citing journals," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 105(3), pages 2089-2108, December.
    2. Schmal, W. Benedikt & Haucap, Justus & Knoke, Leon, 2023. "The role of gender and coauthors in academic publication behavior," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 52(10).
    3. Renata Kudaibergenova & Sandugash Uzakbay & Asselya Makanova & Kymbat Ramadinkyzy & Erlan Kistaubayev & Ruslan Dussekeev & Kadyrzhan Smagulov, 2022. "Managing publication change at Al-Farabi Kazakh National University: a case study," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(1), pages 453-479, January.
    4. Currie, Russell R. & Pandher, Gurupdesh S., 2020. "Finance journal rankings: Active scholar assessment revisited," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 111(C).
    5. Lin Feng & Jian Zhou & Sheng-Lan Liu & Ning Cai & Jie Yang, 2020. "Analysis of journal evaluation indicators: an experimental study based on unsupervised Laplacian score," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 124(1), pages 233-254, July.
    6. Bornmann, Lutz & Tekles, Alexander, 2021. "Convergent validity of several indicators measuring disruptiveness with milestone assignments to physics papers by experts," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 15(3).
    7. Walters, William H., 2017. "Do subjective journal ratings represent whole journals or typical articles? Unweighted or weighted citation impact?," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 11(3), pages 730-744.
    8. Mike Thelwall, 2016. "Interpreting correlations between citation counts and other indicators," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 108(1), pages 337-347, July.
    9. Emanuel Kulczycki & Ewa A. Rozkosz, 2017. "Does an expert-based evaluation allow us to go beyond the Impact Factor? Experiences from building a ranking of national journals in Poland," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 111(1), pages 417-442, April.
    10. Saarela, Mirka & Kärkkäinen, Tommi, 2020. "Can we automate expert-based journal rankings? Analysis of the Finnish publication indicator," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 14(2).
    11. Yu Zhang & Min Wang & Morteza Saberi & Elizabeth Chang, 2022. "Analysing academic paper ranking algorithms using test data and benchmarks: an investigation," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(7), pages 4045-4074, July.
    12. Johan Lyhagen & Per Ahlgren, 2020. "Uncertainty and the ranking of economics journals," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 125(3), pages 2545-2560, December.
    13. Andrea Bonaccorsi & Tindaro Cicero & Peter Haddawy & Saeed-UL Hassan, 2017. "Explaining the transatlantic gap in research excellence," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 110(1), pages 217-241, January.
    14. Bonaccorsi, Andrea & Haddawy, Peter & Cicero, Tindaro & Hassan, Saeed-Ul, 2017. "The solitude of stars. An analysis of the distributed excellence model of European universities," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 11(2), pages 435-454.
    15. Saarela, Mirka & Kärkkäinen, Tommi & Lahtonen, Tommi & Rossi, Tuomo, 2016. "Expert-based versus citation-based ranking of scholarly and scientific publication channels," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 10(3), pages 693-718.
    16. Haddawy, Peter & Hassan, Saeed-Ul & Asghar, Awais & Amin, Sarah, 2016. "A comprehensive examination of the relation of three citation-based journal metrics to expert judgment of journal quality," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 10(1), pages 162-173.
    17. Haddawy, Peter & Hassan, Saeed-Ul & Abbey, Craig W. & Lee, Inn Beng, 2017. "Uncovering fine-grained research excellence: The global research benchmarking system," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 11(2), pages 389-406.

    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. 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.
    3. Bouyssou, Denis & Marchant, Thierry, 2016. "Ranking authors using fractional counting of citations: An axiomatic approach," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 10(1), pages 183-199.
    4. Waltman, Ludo & van Eck, Nees Jan, 2013. "A systematic empirical comparison of different approaches for normalizing citation impact indicators," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 7(4), pages 833-849.
    5. Ludo Waltman & Erjia Yan & Nees Jan Eck, 2011. "A recursive field-normalized bibliometric performance indicator: an application to the field of library and information science," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 89(1), pages 301-314, October.
    6. Ludo Waltman & Nees Jan Eck, 2013. "Source normalized indicators of citation impact: an overview of different approaches and an empirical comparison," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 96(3), pages 699-716, September.
    7. Liwei Cai & Jiahao Tian & Jiaying Liu & Xiaomei Bai & Ivan Lee & Xiangjie Kong & Feng Xia, 2019. "Scholarly impact assessment: a survey of citation weighting solutions," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 118(2), pages 453-478, February.
    8. Waltman, Ludo & van Eck, Nees Jan & van Leeuwen, Thed N. & Visser, Martijn S., 2013. "Some modifications to the SNIP journal impact indicator," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 7(2), pages 272-285.
    9. Bornmann, Lutz & Haunschild, Robin, 2016. "Citation score normalized by cited references (CSNCR): The introduction of a new citation impact indicator," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 10(3), pages 875-887.
    10. Cristian Colliander & Per Ahlgren, 2019. "Comparison of publication-level approaches to ex-post citation normalization," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 120(1), pages 283-300, July.
    11. Bornmann, Lutz & Marx, Werner, 2015. "Methods for the generation of normalized citation impact scores in bibliometrics: Which method best reflects the judgements of experts?," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 9(2), pages 408-418.
    12. Henk F. Moed, 2016. "Comprehensive indicator comparisons intelligible to non-experts: the case of two SNIP versions," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 106(1), pages 51-65, January.
    13. Franceschini, Fiorenzo & Maisano, Domenico, 2014. "Sub-field normalization of the IEEE scientific journals based on their connection with Technical Societies," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 8(3), pages 508-533.
    14. Cristiano Varin & Manuela Cattelan & David Firth, 2016. "Statistical modelling of citation exchange between statistics journals," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 179(1), pages 1-63, January.
    15. 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.
    16. M. Zitt, 2011. "Behind citing-side normalization of citations: some properties of the journal impact factor," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 89(1), pages 329-344, October.
    17. Tolga Yuret, 2018. "Author-weighted impact factor and reference return ratio: can we attain more equality among fields?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 116(3), pages 2097-2111, September.
    18. Bornmann, Lutz & Haunschild, Robin, 2016. "Normalization of Mendeley reader impact on the reader- and paper-side: A comparison of the mean discipline normalized reader score (MDNRS) with the mean normalized reader score (MNRS) and bare reader ," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 10(3), pages 776-788.
    19. Zhou, Ping & Leydesdorff, Loet, 2011. "Fractional counting of citations in research evaluation: A cross- and interdisciplinary assessment of the Tsinghua University in Beijing," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 5(3), pages 360-368.
    20. Saarela, Mirka & Kärkkäinen, Tommi & Lahtonen, Tommi & Rossi, Tuomo, 2016. "Expert-based versus citation-based ranking of scholarly and scientific publication channels," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 10(3), pages 693-718.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Citation impact; Field normalization; Norwegian model; RIP; SJR2; SNIP;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:8:y:2014:i:4:p:985-996. 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.