Investigating the journal impact along the columns and rows of the publication-citation matrix
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Investigating the journal impact along the columns and rows of the publication‑citation matrix Hui Fang1 Received: 11 March 2020 / Accepted: 9 September 2020 © Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest, Hungary 2020
Abstract Journal impact factors and diachronic journal impact factors are currently calculated with the data along the rows and columns of the publication-citation matrix of a journal, respectively. The average publication-citation matrix can be obtained by dividing the elements of the publication-citation matrix by the number of papers published by a journal in a given year. Along the rows and columns of the publication-citation matrix, we found that journals in the same subject category can have quite different citation patterns. In particular, some journals have a prolonged impact. To effectively reflect the impact of individual journals with different citation patterns on the scientific community, we propose an integral synchronic journal impact factor that combines the features of the existing journal impact factors and diachronic journal impact factors. This approach utilizes the data along the rows of the publication-citation matrix and the average citations among the papers published in individual years. The length of the citation window can be flexibly set to balance accuracy and timeliness based on citations. Modifications of the proposed indicator considering normalization, the importance of citation sources and a geometric averaging mechanism are provided. Keywords Journal impact factor · Publication-citation matrix · Citation window · Integral synchronic journal impact factor · Delayed recognition paper
Introduction The number of citationsof a paper is usually used to measure the impact of the paper on other researchers. The journal impact can thus be measured according to the citations of papers published in a journal (usually during a certain period, such as one or more calendar years). The citation-based index most widely used to measure the impact of journals is the journal impact factor (JIF) (Garfield 1972) with a 2 year citation window (JIF2). Journals included in the Journal Citation Report (JCR) provided by the Web of Science (WoS, Clarivate Analytics) are ranked in each subject category according to JIF2 every year. JCR * Hui Fang [email protected] 1
State Key Laboratory of Analytical Chemistry for Life Science, School of Electronic Science and Engineering, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210023, China
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Vol.:(0123456789)
Scientometrics
also publishes the JIF with a 5 year citation window (JIF5) to compensate for the limitations of the short citation window of JIF2. Similarly, Scopus measures the impact of the journals it indexes with CiteScore, which uses a 3 year citation window.1 Scopus also provides modified versions of CiteScore with weighting and normalization strategies, termed SJR and SNIP. Literature reviews on the JIF can be found in Waltman (2016). In addition to the abovementioned synchronic JIFs, diachronic JIFs have been proposed and investigated (Ingwersen et al. 2001; F
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