IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/scient/v93y2012i2d10.1007_s11192-012-0675-z.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Relative measure index: a metric to measure the quality of journals

Author

Listed:
  • R. G. Raj

    (University of Malaya)

  • A. N. Zainab

    (University of Malaya)

Abstract

Journal impact factors (JIF) have been an accepted indicator of ranking journals. However, there has been increasing arguments against the fairness of using the JIF as the sole ranking criteria. This resulted in the creation of many other quality metric indices such as the h-index, g-index, immediacy index, Citation Half-Life, as well as SCIMago journal rank (SJR) to name a few. All these metrics have their merits, but none include any great degree of normalization in their computations. Every citation and every publication is taken as having the same importance and therefore weight. The wealth of available data results in multiple different rankings and indexes existing. This paper proposes the use of statistical standard scores or z-scores. The calculation of the z-scores can be performed to normalize the impact factors given to different journals, the average of z-scores can be used across various criteria to create a unified relative measurement (RM) index score. We use the 2008 JCR provided by Thompson Reuters to demonstrate the differences in rankings that would be affected if the RM-index was adopted discuss the fairness that this index would provide to the journal quality ranking.

Suggested Citation

  • R. G. Raj & A. N. Zainab, 2012. "Relative measure index: a metric to measure the quality of journals," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 93(2), pages 305-317, November.
  • Handle: RePEc:spr:scient:v:93:y:2012:i:2:d:10.1007_s11192-012-0675-z
    DOI: 10.1007/s11192-012-0675-z
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11192-012-0675-z
    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/s11192-012-0675-z?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. Zhao, Star X. & Rousseau, Ronald & Ye, Fred Y., 2011. "h-Degree as a basic measure in weighted networks," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 5(4), pages 668-677.
    2. Alireza Abbasi & Jörn Altmann & Junseok Hwang, 2010. "Evaluating scholars based on their academic collaboration activities: two indices, the RC-index and the CC-index, for quantifying collaboration activities of researchers and scientific communities," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 83(1), pages 1-13, April.
    3. Juan Miguel Campanario & Jesús Carretero & Vera Marangon & Antonio Molina & Germán Ros, 2011. "Effect on the journal impact factor of the number and document type of citing records: a wide-scale study," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 87(1), pages 75-84, April.
    4. Raf Guns & Yu Xian Liu & Dilruba Mahbuba, 2011. "Q-measures and betweenness centrality in a collaboration network: a case study of the field of informetrics," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 87(1), pages 133-147, April.
    5. Alireza Abbasi & Jorn Altmann & Junseok Hwang, 2009. "Evaluating Scholars Based on their Academic Collaboration Activities: The RC-Index and CC-Index for Quantifying Collaboration Activities of Researchers and Scientific Communities," TEMEP Discussion Papers 200915, Seoul National University; Technology Management, Economics, and Policy Program (TEMEP), revised Sep 2009.
    6. Fok, Dennis & Franses, Philip Hans, 2007. "Modeling the diffusion of scientific publications," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 139(2), pages 376-390, August.
    7. Korn, A. & Schubert, A. & Telcs, A., 2009. "Lobby index in networks," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 388(11), pages 2221-2226.
    8. Leo Egghe, 2006. "Theory and practise of the g-index," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 69(1), pages 131-152, October.
    9. Wolfgang Glänzel, 2006. "On the h-index - A mathematical approach to a new measure of publication activity and citation impact," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 67(2), pages 315-321, May.
    10. 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.
    11. András Schubert & András Korn & András Telcs, 2009. "Hirsch-type indices for characterizing networks," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 78(2), pages 375-382, February.
    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. Muzammil Tahira & Rose Alinda Alias & Aryati Bakri, 2013. "Scientometric assessment of engineering in Malaysians universities," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 96(3), pages 865-879, September.
    2. Gaviria-Marin, Magaly & Merigó, José M. & Baier-Fuentes, Hugo, 2019. "Knowledge management: A global examination based on bibliometric analysis," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 140(C), pages 194-220.
    3. Magdalena Marczewska & Mariusz Kostrzewski, 2020. "Sustainable Business Models: A Bibliometric Performance Analysis," Energies, MDPI, vol. 13(22), pages 1-30, November.
    4. Stefanie Ringelhan & Jutta Wollersheim & Isabell M Welpe, 2015. "I Like, I Cite? Do Facebook Likes Predict the Impact of Scientific Work?," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(8), pages 1-21, August.
    5. 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.
    6. Gangan Prathap, 2012. "Evaluating journal performance metrics," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 92(2), pages 403-408, August.
    7. Hugo Baier-Fuentes & José M. Merigó & José Ernesto Amorós & Magaly Gaviria-Marín, 2019. "International entrepreneurship: a bibliometric overview," International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal, Springer, vol. 15(2), pages 385-429, June.
    8. Zhang, Baolong & Wang, Hao & Deng, Sanhong & Su, Xinning, 2020. "Measurement and analysis of Chinese journal discriminative capacity," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 14(1).
    9. A. Abrizah & A. N. Zainab & K. Kiran & R. G. Raj, 2013. "LIS journals scientific impact and subject categorization: a comparison between Web of Science and Scopus," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 94(2), pages 721-740, February.

    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. András Schubert, 2012. "A Hirsch-type index of co-author partnership ability," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 91(1), pages 303-308, April.
    2. Alireza Abbasi, 2013. "h-Type hybrid centrality measures for weighted networks," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 96(2), pages 633-640, August.
    3. Rousseau, Ronald & Zhao, Star X., 2015. "A general conceptual framework for characterizing the ego in a network," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 9(1), pages 145-149.
    4. Yan, Xiangbin & Zhai, Li & Fan, Weiguo, 2013. "C-index: A weighted network node centrality measure for collaboration competence," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 7(1), pages 223-239.
    5. András Schubert, 2015. "Rescaling the h-index," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 102(2), pages 1647-1653, February.
    6. Judit Bar-Ilan & Mark Levene, 2015. "The hw-rank: an h-index variant for ranking web pages," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 102(3), pages 2247-2253, March.
    7. R. Álvarez & E. Cahué & J. Clemente-Gallardo & A. Ferrer & D. Íñiguez & X. Mellado & A. Rivero & G. Ruiz & F. Sanz & E. Serrano & A. Tarancón & Y. Vergara, 2015. "Analysis of academic productivity based on Complex Networks," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 104(3), pages 651-672, September.
    8. Wei, Shelia X. & Tong, Tong & Rousseau, Ronald & Wang, Wanru & Ye, Fred Y., 2022. "Relations among the h-, g-, ψ-, and p-index and offset-ability," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 16(4).
    9. Abbasi, Alireza & Altmann, Jörn & Hossain, Liaquat, 2011. "Identifying the effects of co-authorship networks on the performance of scholars: A correlation and regression analysis of performance measures and social network analysis measures," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 5(4), pages 594-607.
    10. Wang, Ruby W. & Wei, Shelia X. & Ye, Fred Y., 2021. "Extracting a core structure from heterogeneous information network using h-subnet and meta-path strength," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 15(3).
    11. Guillermo Armando Ronda-Pupo & Carlos Díaz-Contreras & Guillermo Ronda-Velázquez & Jorge Carlos Ronda-Pupo, 2015. "The role of academic collaboration in the impact of Latin-American research on management," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 102(2), pages 1435-1454, February.
    12. Zhao, Star X. & Ye, Fred Y., 2012. "Exploring the directed h-degree in directed weighted networks," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 6(4), pages 619-630.
    13. Alireza Abbasi & Jorn Altmann, 2010. "On the Correlation between Research Performance and Social Network Analysis Measures Applied to Research Collaboration Networks," TEMEP Discussion Papers 201066, Seoul National University; Technology Management, Economics, and Policy Program (TEMEP), revised Oct 2010.
    14. Li Zhai & Xiujuan Li & Xiangbin Yan & Weiguo Fan, 2014. "Evolutionary analysis of collaboration networks in the field of information systems," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 101(3), pages 1657-1677, December.
    15. Jean J. Wang & Sarah X. Shao & Fred Y. Ye, 2021. "Identifying 'seed' papers in sciences," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(7), pages 6001-6011, July.
    16. Deming Lin & Tianhui Gong & Wenbin Liu & Martin Meyer, 2020. "An entropy-based measure for the evolution of h index research," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 125(3), pages 2283-2298, December.
    17. Thor, Andreas & Marx, Werner & Leydesdorff, Loet & Bornmann, Lutz, 2016. "Introducing CitedReferencesExplorer (CRExplorer): A program for reference publication year spectroscopy with cited references standardization," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 10(2), pages 503-515.
    18. Ying Huang & Wolfgang Glänzel & Lin Zhang, 2021. "Tracing the development of mapping knowledge domains," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(7), pages 6201-6224, July.
    19. András Schubert, 2015. "X-centage: a Hirsch-inspired indicator for distributions of percentage-valued variables and its use for measuring heterodisciplinarity," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 102(1), pages 307-313, January.
    20. Alireza Abbasi & Mahdi Jalili & Abolghasem Sadeghi-Niaraki, 2018. "Influence of network-based structural and power diversity on research performance," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 117(1), pages 579-590, October.

    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:93:y:2012:i:2:d:10.1007_s11192-012-0675-z. 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.