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Benford’s law and citations, articles and impact factors of scientific journals

Author

Listed:
  • Juan Miguel Campanario

    (Universidad de Alcalá)

  • María Angeles Coslado

    (Fundación Española para la Ciencia y la Tecnología)

Abstract

First order digits in data sets of natural and social data often follow a distribution called Benford’s law. We studied the number of articles published, citations received and impact factors of all journals indexed in the Science Citation Index from 1998 to 2007. We tested their compliance with Benford’s law. Citations data followed Benford’s law remarkably well in all years studied. However, for the data on the numbers of articles, the differences between the values predicted by Benford’s law and the observed values were always statistically significant. This was also the case for most data for impact factors.

Suggested Citation

  • Juan Miguel Campanario & María Angeles Coslado, 2011. "Benford’s law and citations, articles and impact factors of scientific journals," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 88(2), pages 421-432, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:scient:v:88:y:2011:i:2:d:10.1007_s11192-011-0387-9
    DOI: 10.1007/s11192-011-0387-9
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Hales, Douglas N. & Sridharan, V. & Radhakrishnan, Abirami & Chakravorty, Satya S. & Siha, Samia M., 2008. "Testing the accuracy of employee-reported data: An inexpensive alternative approach to traditional methods," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 189(3), pages 583-593, September.
    2. George Judge & Laura Schechter, 2009. "Detecting Problems in Survey Data Using Benford’s Law," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 44(1).
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    Citations

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    Cited by:

    1. M. Jayasree & C. S. Pavana Jyothi & P. Ramya, 2018. "Benford’s Law and Stock Market—The Implications for Investors: The Evidence from India Nifty Fifty," Jindal Journal of Business Research, , vol. 7(2), pages 103-121, December.
    2. Bogdan Vasile Ileanu & Marcel Ausloos & Claudiu Herteliu & Marian Pompiliu Cristescu, 2019. "Intriguing behavior when testing the impact of quotation marks usage in Google search results," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 53(5), pages 2507-2519, September.
    3. Alexandre Donizeti Alves & Horacio Hideki Yanasse & Nei Yoshihiro Soma, 2014. "Benford’s Law and articles of scientific journals: comparison of JCR® and Scopus data," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 98(1), pages 173-184, January.
    4. Lasse Pröger & Paul Griesberger & Klaus Hackländer & Norbert Brunner & Manfred Kühleitner, 2021. "Benford’s Law for Telemetry Data of Wildlife," Stats, MDPI, vol. 4(4), pages 1-7, November.
    5. Venuka Aggarwal & Khushdeep Dharni, 2020. "Deshelling the Shell Companies Using Benford’s Law: An Emerging Market Study," Vikalpa: The Journal for Decision Makers, , vol. 45(3), pages 160-169, September.
    6. Hsiang-chi Tseng & Wei-neng Huang & Ding-wei Huang, 2017. "Modified Benford’s law for two-exponent distributions," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 110(3), pages 1403-1413, March.

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