IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/scient/v128y2023i3d10.1007_s11192-022-04622-0.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Correlating article citedness and journal impact: an empirical investigation by field on a large-scale dataset

Author

Listed:
  • Giovanni Abramo

    (National Research Council of Italy)

  • Ciriaco Andrea D’Angelo

    (National Research Council of Italy
    University of Rome “Tor Vergata”)

  • Flavia Costa

    (University of Rome “Tor Vergata”)

Abstract

In spite of previous research demonstrating the risks involved, and counsel against the practice as early as 1997, some research evaluations continue to use journal impact alone as a surrogate of the number of citations of hosted articles to assess the latter’s impact. Such usage is also taken up by research administrators and policy-makers, with very serious implications. The aim of this work is to investigate the correlation between the citedness of a publication and the impact of the host journal. We extend the analyses of previous literature to all STEM fields. Then we also aim to assess whether this correlation varies across fields and is stronger for highly cited authors than for lowly cited ones. Our dataset consists of a total of almost one million authorships of 2010–2019 publications authored by about 28,000 professors in 230 research fields. Results show a low correlation between the two indicators, more so for lowly cited authors as compared to highly cited ones, although differences occur across fields.

Suggested Citation

  • Giovanni Abramo & Ciriaco Andrea D’Angelo & Flavia Costa, 2023. "Correlating article citedness and journal impact: an empirical investigation by field on a large-scale dataset," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 128(3), pages 1877-1894, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:scient:v:128:y:2023:i:3:d:10.1007_s11192-022-04622-0
    DOI: 10.1007/s11192-022-04622-0
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11192-022-04622-0
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11192-022-04622-0?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. Lanu Kim & Jason H. Portenoy & Jevin D. West & Katherine W. Stovel, 2020. "Scientific journals still matter in the era of academic search engines and preprint archives," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 71(10), pages 1218-1226, October.
    2. Wolfgang Glänzel & Henk F. Moed, 2002. "Journal impact measures in bibliometric research," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 53(2), pages 171-193, February.
    3. Bornmann, Lutz & Leydesdorff, Loet, 2017. "Skewness of citation impact data and covariates of citation distributions: A large-scale empirical analysis based on Web of Science data," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 11(1), pages 164-175.
    4. George A. Lozano & Vincent Larivière & Yves Gingras, 2012. "The weakening relationship between the impact factor and papers' citations in the digital age," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 63(11), pages 2140-2145, November.
    5. Ciriaco Andrea D'Angelo & Cristiano Giuffrida & Giovanni Abramo, 2011. "A heuristic approach to author name disambiguation in bibliometrics databases for large-scale research assessments," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 62(2), pages 257-269, February.
    6. Éric Archambault & Vincent Larivière, 2009. "History of the journal impact factor: Contingencies and consequences," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 79(3), pages 635-649, June.
    7. 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.
    8. Per O. Seglen, 1994. "Causal relationship between article citedness and journal impact," Journal of the American Society for Information Science, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 45(1), pages 1-11, January.
    9. Loet Leydesdorff, 2008. "Caveats for the use of citation indicators in research and journal evaluations," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 59(2), pages 278-287, January.
    10. 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.
    11. Thed N. van Leeuwen & Henk F. Moed, 2005. "Characteristics of journal impact factors: The effects of uncitedness and citation distribution on the understanding of journal impact factors," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 63(2), pages 357-371, April.
    12. George A. Lozano & Vincent Larivière & Yves Gingras, 2012. "The weakening relationship between the impact factor and papers' citations in the digital age," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 63(11), pages 2140-2145, November.
    13. Diana Hicks & Paul Wouters & Ludo Waltman & Sarah de Rijcke & Ismael Rafols, 2015. "Bibliometrics: The Leiden Manifesto for research metrics," Nature, Nature, vol. 520(7548), pages 429-431, April.
    14. Brito, Ricardo & Rodríguez-Navarro, Alonso, 2019. "Evaluating research and researchers by the journal impact factor: Is it better than coin flipping?," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 13(1), pages 314-324.
    15. Giovanni Abramo & Ciriaco Andrea D’Angelo & Flavia Di Costa, 2010. "Citations versus journal impact factor as proxy of quality: could the latter ever be preferable?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 84(3), pages 821-833, September.
    16. Per O. Seglen, 1992. "The skewness of science," Journal of the American Society for Information Science, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 43(9), pages 628-638, October.
    17. Tobias Kiesslich & Marlena Beyreis & Georg Zimmermann & Andreas Traweger, 2021. "Citation inequality and the Journal Impact Factor: median, mean, (does it) matter?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(2), pages 1249-1269, February.
    18. Lin Zhang & Ronald Rousseau & Gunnar Sivertsen, 2017. "Science deserves to be judged by its contents, not by its wrapping: Revisiting Seglen's work on journal impact and research evaluation," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 12(3), pages 1-18, March.
    19. Waltman, Ludo, 2016. "A review of the literature on citation impact indicators," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 10(2), pages 365-391.
    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. Kosyakov, Denis & Pislyakov, Vladimir, 2024. "“I'd like to publish in Q1, but there's no Q1 to be found”: Study of journal quartile distributions across subject categories and topics," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 18(1).

    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. Tobias Kiesslich & Marlena Beyreis & Georg Zimmermann & Andreas Traweger, 2021. "Citation inequality and the Journal Impact Factor: median, mean, (does it) matter?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(2), pages 1249-1269, February.
    3. Raminta Pranckutė, 2021. "Web of Science (WoS) and Scopus: The Titans of Bibliographic Information in Today’s Academic World," Publications, MDPI, vol. 9(1), pages 1-59, March.
    4. Gabriel-Alexandru Vȋiu & Mihai Păunescu, 2021. "The lack of meaningful boundary differences between journal impact factor quartiles undermines their independent use in research evaluation," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(2), pages 1495-1525, February.
    5. Lutz Bornmann & Klaus Wohlrabe, 2019. "Normalisation of citation impact in economics," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 120(2), pages 841-884, August.
    6. Рубинштейн Александр Яковлевич, "undated". "Ранжирование Российских Экономических Журналов: Научный Метод Или «Игра В Цыфирь»? [Ran Ranking of Russian Economic Journals: The Scientific Method or “Numbers Game”?]," Working papers a:pru175:ye:2016:1, Institute of Economics.
    7. Lanu Kim & Jason H. Portenoy & Jevin D. West & Katherine W. Stovel, 2020. "Scientific journals still matter in the era of academic search engines and preprint archives," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 71(10), pages 1218-1226, October.
    8. Milojević, Staša & Radicchi, Filippo & Bar-Ilan, Judit, 2017. "Citation success index − An intuitive pair-wise journal comparison metric," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 11(1), pages 223-231.
    9. Johannes König & David I. Stern & Richard S.J. Tol, 2022. "Confidence Intervals for Recursive Journal Impact Factors," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 22-038/III, Tinbergen Institute.
    10. Lutz Bornmann & Alexander Tekles & Loet Leydesdorff, 2019. "How well does I3 perform for impact measurement compared to other bibliometric indicators? The convergent validity of several (field-normalized) indicators," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 119(2), pages 1187-1205, May.
    11. Zhesi Shen & Liying Yang & Zengru Di & Jinshan Wu, 2019. "Large enough sample size to rank two groups of data reliably according to their means," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 118(2), pages 653-671, February.
    12. Juan Gorraiz & Ursula Ulrych & Wolfgang Glänzel & Wenceslao Arroyo-Machado & Daniel Torres-Salinas, 2022. "Measuring the excellence contribution at the journal level: an alternative to Garfield’s impact factor," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(12), pages 7229-7251, December.
    13. Aleskerov, F. & Badgaeva, D. & Pislyakov, V. & Sterligov, I. & Shvydun, S., 2016. "An Importance of Russian and International Economic Journals: a Network Approach," Journal of the New Economic Association, New Economic Association, vol. 30(2), pages 193-205.
    14. Fei Shu & Wei Quan & Bikun Chen & Junping Qiu & Cassidy R. Sugimoto & Vincent Larivière, 2020. "The role of Web of Science publications in China’s tenure system," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 122(3), pages 1683-1695, March.
    15. Yves Fassin, 2021. "Does the Financial Times FT50 journal list select the best management and economics journals?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(7), pages 5911-5943, July.
    16. Bouyssou, Denis & Marchant, Thierry, 2011. "Bibliometric rankings of journals based on Impact Factors: An axiomatic approach," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 5(1), pages 75-86.
    17. Ruben Miranda & Esther Garcia-Carpintero, 2019. "Comparison of the share of documents and citations from different quartile journals in 25 research areas," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 121(1), pages 479-501, October.
    18. Loet Leydesdorff & Paul Wouters & Lutz Bornmann, 2016. "Professional and citizen bibliometrics: complementarities and ambivalences in the development and use of indicators—a state-of-the-art report," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 109(3), pages 2129-2150, December.
    19. Lutz Bornmann & Klaus Wohlrabe, 2019. "Die Normierung von Zitaten in der Volkswirtschaftslehre," ifo Schnelldienst, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, vol. 72(20), pages 29-33, October.
    20. 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.

    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:spr:scient:v:128:y:2023:i:3:d:10.1007_s11192-022-04622-0. 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: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    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.