IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/journl/hal-02359815.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Bibliometric rankings of journals based on Impact Factors: An axiomatic approach

Author

Listed:
  • Denis Bouyssou

    (LAMSADE - Laboratoire d'analyse et modélisation de systèmes pour l'aide à la décision - Université Paris Dauphine-PSL - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique)

  • Thierry Marchant

    (Department of Data Analysis - UGENT - Universiteit Gent = Ghent University = Université de Gand)

Abstract

This paper proposes an axiomatic analysis of Impact Factors when used as tools for ranking journals. This analysis draws on the similarities between the problem of comparing distribution of citations among papers and that of comparing probability distributions on consequences as commonly done in decision theory. Our analysis singles out a number of characteristic properties of the ranking based on Impact Factors. We also suggest alternative ways of using distributions of citations to rank order journals.
(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Suggested Citation

  • Denis Bouyssou & Thierry Marchant, 2011. "Bibliometric rankings of journals based on Impact Factors: An axiomatic approach," Post-Print hal-02359815, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:journl:hal-02359815
    DOI: 10.1016/j.joi.2010.09.001
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Woeginger, Gerhard J., 2008. "An axiomatic analysis of Egghe’s g-index," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 2(4), pages 364-368.
    2. Nicolas CARAYOL & Agenor LAHATTE, 2009. "Dominance relations and universities ranking," Cahiers du GREThA (2007-2019) 2009-02, Groupe de Recherche en Economie Théorique et Appliquée (GREThA).
    3. Quesada, Antonio, 2009. "Monotonicity and the Hirsch index," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 3(2), pages 158-160.
    4. Ignacio Palacios-Huerta & Oscar Volij, 2004. "The Measurement of Intellectual Influence," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 72(3), pages 963-977, May.
    5. Wolfgang Glänzel & Henk F. Moed, 2002. "Journal impact measures in bibliometric research," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 53(2), pages 171-193, February.
    6. Vincent Larivière & Yves Gingras, 2010. "The impact factor's Matthew Effect: A natural experiment in bibliometrics," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 61(2), pages 424-427, February.
    7. Woeginger, Gerhard J., 2008. "An axiomatic characterization of the Hirsch-index," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 56(2), pages 224-232, September.
    8. Peter Weingart, 2005. "Impact of bibliometrics upon the science system: Inadvertent consequences?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 62(1), pages 117-131, January.
    9. Gilboa,Itzhak, 2009. "Theory of Decision under Uncertainty," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521517324, September.
    10. Bouyssou, D. & Marchant, T., 2010. "Consistent bibliometric rankings of authors and of journals," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 4(3), pages 365-378.
    11. 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.
    12. 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.
    13. Wakker,Peter P., 2010. "Prospect Theory," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521765015.
    14. 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.
    15. Bar-Ilan, Judit, 2008. "Informetrics at the beginning of the 21st century—A review," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 2(1), pages 1-52.
    16. Haim Levy, 1992. "Stochastic Dominance and Expected Utility: Survey and Analysis," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 38(4), pages 555-593, April.
    17. Fishburn, Peter C, 1991. "Nontransitive Preferences in Decision Theory," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 4(2), pages 113-134, April.
    18. Shepherdson, J. C., 1980. "Utility theory based on rational probabilities," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 7(1), pages 91-113, March.
    19. Bouyssou, D. & Marchant, T., 2010. "Consistent bibliometric rankings of authors and of journals," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 4(3), pages 365-378.
    20. Bar-Ilan, Judit, 2010. "Rankings of information and library science journals by JIF and by h-type indices," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 4(2), pages 141-147.
    21. Rothschild, Michael & Stiglitz, Joseph E., 1970. "Increasing risk: I. A definition," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 2(3), pages 225-243, September.
    22. Vieira, E.S. & Gomes, J.A.N.F., 2010. "Citations to scientific articles: Its distribution and dependence on the article features," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 4(1), pages 1-13.
    23. Anthony F. J. Van Raan, 2001. "Competition amongst scientists for publication status:Toward a model of scientific publication and citation distributions," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 51(1), pages 347-357, April.
    24. Waltman, L. & van Eck, N.J.P., 2009. "A Taxonomy of Bibliometric Performance Indicators Based on the Property of Consistency," ERIM Report Series Research in Management ERS-2009-014-LIS, Erasmus Research Institute of Management (ERIM), ERIM is the joint research institute of the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University and the Erasmus School of Economics (ESE) at Erasmus University Rotterdam.
    25. Waltman, L. & van Eck, N.J.P., 2009. "A simple alternative to the h-index," ERIM Report Series Research in Management ERS-2009-043-LIS, Erasmus Research Institute of Management (ERIM), ERIM is the joint research institute of the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University and the Erasmus School of Economics (ESE) at Erasmus University Rotterdam.
    26. 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.
    27. Franceschet, Massimo, 2010. "Journal influence factors," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 4(3), pages 239-248.
    28. Thierry Marchant, 2009. "An axiomatic characterization of the ranking based on the h-index and some other bibliometric rankings of authors," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 80(2), pages 325-342, August.
    29. Woeginger, Gerhard J., 2008. "A symmetry axiom for scientific impact indices," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 2(4), pages 298-303.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Bouyssou, Denis & Marchant, Thierry, 2014. "An axiomatic approach to bibliometric rankings and indices," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 8(3), pages 449-477.
    2. 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.
    3. Waltman, Ludo, 2016. "A review of the literature on citation impact indicators," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 10(2), pages 365-391.
    4. Michel Zitt, 2012. "The journal impact factor: angel, devil, or scapegoat? A comment on J.K. Vanclay’s article 2011," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 92(2), pages 485-503, August.
    5. Osório, António (António Miguel), 2019. "The value and credits of n-authors publications," Working Papers 2072/376026, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Department of Economics.
    6. Chambers, Christopher P. & Miller, Alan D., 2014. "Scholarly influence," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 151(C), pages 571-583.
    7. Woeginger, Gerhard J., 2014. "Investigations on the step-based research indices of Chambers and Miller," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 8(3), pages 659-666.
    8. repec:cte:werepe:11672 is not listed on IDEAS
    9. Albarrán, Pedro & Ortuño, Ignacio & Ruiz-Castillo, Javier, 2011. "The measurement of low- and high-impact in citation distributions: Technical results," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 5(1), pages 48-63.
    10. Javier Ruiz-Castillo, 2012. "The evaluation of citation distributions," SERIEs: Journal of the Spanish Economic Association, Springer;Spanish Economic Association, vol. 3(1), pages 291-310, March.
    11. Ana Paula dos Santos Rubem & Ariane Lima Moura & João Carlos Correia Baptista Soares de Mello, 2015. "Comparative analysis of some individual bibliometric indices when applied to groups of researchers," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 102(1), pages 1019-1035, January.
    12. Quesada, Antonio, 2011. "Axiomatics for the Hirsch index and the Egghe index," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 5(3), pages 476-480.
    13. Franceschini, Fiorenzo & Maisano, Domenico A., 2010. "Analysis of the Hirsch index's operational properties," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 203(2), pages 494-504, June.
    14. Gagolewski, Marek, 2013. "Scientific impact assessment cannot be fair," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 7(4), pages 792-802.
    15. 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.
    16. Csató, László, 2019. "Journal ranking should depend on the level of aggregation," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 13(4).
    17. Stefano Vannucci, 2010. "Dominance dimension: a common parametric formulation for integer-valued scientific impact indices," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 84(1), pages 43-48, July.
    18. Josep Freixas & Roger Hoerl & William S. Zwicker, 2023. "Nash's bargaining problem and the scale-invariant Hirsch citation index," Papers 2309.01192, arXiv.org.
    19. 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.
    20. Bar-Ilan, Judit, 2008. "Informetrics at the beginning of the 21st century—A review," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 2(1), pages 1-52.
    21. Antonio Quesada, 2011. "Further characterizations of the Hirsch index," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 87(1), pages 107-114, April.

    More about this item

    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:hal:journl:hal-02359815. 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: CCSD (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

    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.