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An evaluation of impacts in “Nanoscience & nanotechnology”: steps towards standards for citation analysis

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  • Loet Leydesdorff

    (University of Amsterdam)

Abstract

One is inclined to conceptualize impact in terms of citations per publication, and thus as an average. However, citation distributions are skewed, and the average has the disadvantage that the number of publications is used in the denominator. Using hundred percentiles, one can integrate the normalized citation curve and develop an indicator that can be compared across document sets because percentile ranks are defined at the article level. I apply this indicator to the set of 58 journals in the WoS Subject Category of “Nanoscience & nanotechnology,” and rank journals, countries, cities, and institutes using non-parametric statistics. The significance levels of results can thus be indicated. The results are first compared with the ISI-impact factors, but this Integrated Impact Indicator (I3) can be used with any set downloaded from the (Social) Science Citation Index. The software is made publicly available at the Internet. Visualization techniques are also specified for evaluation by positioning institutes on Google Map overlays.

Suggested Citation

  • Loet Leydesdorff, 2013. "An evaluation of impacts in “Nanoscience & nanotechnology”: steps towards standards for citation analysis," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 94(1), pages 35-55, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:scient:v:94:y:2013:i:1:d:10.1007_s11192-012-0750-5
    DOI: 10.1007/s11192-012-0750-5
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Stephen J. Bensman & Loet Leydesdorff, 2009. "Definition and identification of journals as bibliographic and subject entities: Librarianship versus ISI Journal Citation Reports methods and their effect on citation measures," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 60(6), pages 1097-1117, June.
    2. Loet Leydesdorff & Lutz Bornmann & Rüdiger Mutz & Tobias Opthof, 2011. "Turning the tables on citation analysis one more time: Principles for comparing sets of documents," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 62(7), pages 1370-1381, July.
    3. Egghe, L., 2012. "Averages of ratios compared to ratios of averages: Mathematical results," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 6(2), pages 307-317.
    4. Loet Leydesdorff & Tobias Opthof, 2010. "Scopus's source normalized impact per paper (SNIP) versus a journal impact factor based on fractional counting of citations," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 61(11), pages 2365-2369, November.
    5. Peter Vinkler, 2010. "The πv-index: a new indicator to characterize the impact of journals," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 82(3), pages 461-475, March.
    6. Loet Leydesdorff & Olle Persson, 2010. "Mapping the geography of science: Distribution patterns and networks of relations among cities and institutes," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 61(8), pages 1622-1634, August.
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    9. Vinkler, Péter, 2012. "The case of scientometricians with the “absolute relative” impact indicator," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 6(2), pages 254-264.
    10. Loet Leydesdorff, 2012. "Alternatives to the journal impact factor: I3 and the top-10% (or top-25%?) of the most-highly cited papers," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 92(2), pages 355-365, August.
    11. 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.
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    15. Loet Leydesdorff, 2006. "Can scientific journals be classified in terms of aggregated journal‐journal citation relations using the Journal Citation Reports?," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 57(5), pages 601-613, March.
    16. Radicchi, Filippo & Castellano, Claudio, 2012. "Testing the fairness of citation indicators for comparison across scientific domains: The case of fractional citation counts," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 6(1), pages 121-130.
    17. Can Huang & Ad Notten & Nico Rasters, 2011. "Nanoscience and technology publications and patents: a review of social science studies and search strategies," The Journal of Technology Transfer, Springer, vol. 36(2), pages 145-172, April.
    18. Ismael Rafols & Loet Leydesdorff, 2009. "Content‐based and algorithmic classifications of journals: Perspectives on the dynamics of scientific communication and indexer effects," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 60(9), pages 1823-1835, September.
    19. Lutz Bornmann & Loet Leydesdorff, 2011. "Which cities produce more excellent papers than can be expected? A new mapping approach, using Google Maps, based on statistical significance testing," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 62(10), pages 1954-1962, October.
    20. 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.
    21. 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.
    22. 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.
    23. 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.
    24. Lutz Bornmann & Hermann Schier & Werner Marx & Hans‐Dieter Daniel, 2011. "Is interactive open access publishing able to identify high‐impact submissions? A study on the predictive validity of Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics by using percentile rank classes," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 62(1), pages 61-71, January.
    25. Gangan Prathap, 2011. "Fractionalized exergy for evaluating research performance," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 62(11), pages 2294-2295, November.
    26. Péter Vinkler, 2011. "Application of the distribution of citations among publications in scientometric evaluations," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 62(10), pages 1963-1978, October.
    27. Bonaccorsi, Andrea & Vargas, Juan, 2010. "Proliferation dynamics in new sciences," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 39(8), pages 1034-1050, October.
    28. Bornmann, Lutz & Leydesdorff, Loet & Van den Besselaar, Peter, 2010. "A meta-evaluation of scientific research proposals: Different ways of comparing rejected to awarded applications," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 4(3), pages 211-220.
    29. Leydesdorff, Loet & Rafols, Ismael, 2012. "Interactive overlays: A new method for generating global journal maps from Web-of-Science data," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 6(2), pages 318-332.
    30. Wolfgang Glänzel & András Schubert, 2003. "A new classification scheme of science fields and subfields designed for scientometric evaluation purposes," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 56(3), pages 357-367, March.
    31. Moed, Henk F., 2010. "Measuring contextual citation impact of scientific journals," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 4(3), pages 265-277.
    32. 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.
    33. Lundberg, Jonas, 2007. "Lifting the crown—citation z-score," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 1(2), pages 145-154.
    34. Ronald Rousseau, 2012. "Basic properties of both percentile rank scores and the I3 indicator," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 63(2), pages 416-420, February.
    35. Opthof, Tobias & Leydesdorff, Loet, 2010. "Caveats for the journal and field normalizations in the CWTS (“Leiden”) evaluations of research performance," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 4(3), pages 423-430.
    36. Ronald Rousseau, 2012. "Basic properties of both percentile rank scores and the I3 indicator," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 63(2), pages 416-420, February.
    37. Gangan Prathap, 2011. "Fractionalized exergy for evaluating research performance," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 62(11), pages 2294-2295, November.
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    Cited by:

    1. Patrick Herron & Aashish Mehta & Cong Cao & Timothy Lenoir, 2016. "Research diversification and impact: the case of national nanoscience development," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 109(2), pages 629-659, November.
    2. T. Gorjiara & C. Baldock, 2014. "Nanoscience and nanotechnology research publications: a comparison between Australia and the rest of the world," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 100(1), pages 121-148, July.
    3. Mingyang Wang & Shijia Jiao & Kah-Hin Chai & Guangsheng Chen, 2019. "Building journal’s long-term impact: using indicators detected from the sustained active articles," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 121(1), pages 261-283, October.
    4. Rogheyeh Eskrootchi & Nadia Sanee, 2018. "Comparison of medical research performance by thermodynamic and citation analysis methods," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 117(3), pages 2159-2168, December.

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