Coercive Journal Self-citations, Impact Factor, Journal Influence and Article Influence

Type of content
Discussion / Working Papers
Publisher's DOI/URI
Thesis discipline
Degree name
Publisher
University of Canterbury. Department of Economics and Finance
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Language
Date
2013
Authors
Chang, C-L.
McAleer, M.
Oxley, L.
Abstract

This paper examines the issue of coercive journal self-citations and the practical usefulness of two recent journal performance metrics, namely the Eigenfactor score, which may be interpreted as measuring Journal Influence, and the Article Influence score, using the Thomson Reuters ISI Web of Science (hereafter ISI) data for 2009 for the 200 most highly cited journals in each of the Sciences and Social Sciences. The paper also compares the two new bibliometric measures with two existing ISI metrics, namely Total Citations and the 5-year Impact Factor (5YIF) (including journal self-citations) of a journal. It is shown that the Sciences and Social Sciences are different in terms of the strength of the relationship of journal performance metrics, although the actual relationships are very similar. Moreover, the journal influence and article influence journal performance metrics are shown to be closely related empirically to the two existing ISI metrics, and hence add little in practical usefulness to what is already known, except for eliminating the pressure arising from coercive journal self-citations. These empirical results are compared with existing results in the bibliometrics literature.

Description
WORKING PAPER No. 12/2013  
Citation
Chang, C-L., McAleer, M., Oxley, L. (2013) Coercive Journal Self-citations, Impact Factor, Journal Influence and Article Influence..
Keywords
journal performance metrics, coercive journal self-citations, research assessment measures, total citations, 5-year impact factor (5YIF), Eigenfactor, journal influence, article influence
Ngā upoko tukutuku/Māori subject headings
ANZSRC fields of research
Fields of Research::46 - Information and computing sciences::4610 - Library and information studies::461005 - Informetrics
Field of Research::08 - Information and Computing Sciences::0807 - Library and Information Studies::080704 - Information Retrieval and Web Search
Field of Research::16 - Studies in Human Society
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