The lognormal distribution explains the remarkable pattern documented by characteristic scores and scales in scientometrics

Gabriel-Alexandru Vîiu

Journal of Informetrics, 2018, vol. 12, issue 2, 401-415

Abstract: Characteristic scores and scales (CSS) – a well-established scientometric tool for the study of citation counts – have been used to document a striking phenomenon that characterizes citation distributions at high levels of aggregation: irrespective of scientific field and citation window empirical studies find a persistent pattern whereby about 70% of scientific papers belong to the class of poorly cited papers, about 21% belong to the class of fairly cited papers, 6% to that of remarkably cited papers and 3% to the class of outstandingly cited papers. This article aims to advance the understanding of this remarkable result by examining it in the context of the lognormal distribution, a popular model used to describe citation counts across scientific fields. The article shows that the application of the CSS method to lognormal distributions provides a very good fit to the 70–21–6–3% empirical pattern provided these distributions are characterized by a standard deviation parameter in the range of about 0.8–1.3. The CSS pattern is essentially explainable as an epiphenomenon of the lognormal functional form and, more generally, as a consequence of the skewness of science which is manifest in heavy-tailed citation distributions.

Keywords: Citation analysis; Characteristic scores and scales (CSS); Lognormal distribution; Universality claim (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1751157717303887
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:infome:v:12:y:2018:i:2:p:401-415

DOI: 10.1016/j.joi.2018.02.002

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Informetrics is currently edited by Leo Egghe

More articles in Journal of Informetrics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().