Author-weighted impact factor and reference return ratio: can we attain more equality among fields?

Tolga Yuret

Scientometrics, 2018, vol. 116, issue 3, No 32, 2097-2111

Abstract: Abstracts Despite its problems, journal impact factor (JIF) is the most popular journal quality metric. In this paper, two simple adjustments of JIF are tested to see whether more equality among fields can be attained. In author-weighted impact factor (AWIF), the number of citations that a journal receive is divided by the number of authors in that journal. In reference return ratio (RRR), the number of citations that a journal receive is divided by the number of references in that journal. We compute JIF, AWIF and RRR of all 10,848 journals included in journal citation report 2012. Science journals outperform social science journals at JIF but social science journals outperform science journals at both AWIF and RRR. Highest level of equality between science and social science journals is attained when AWIF is used. These findings cannot be generalized when narrower subject categories are considered.

Keywords: Field-neutrality; Impact factor; Cited-references; Number of authors (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11192-018-2806-7 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

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:spr:scient:v:116:y:2018:i:3:d:10.1007_s11192-018-2806-7

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/11192

DOI: 10.1007/s11192-018-2806-7

Access Statistics for this article

Scientometrics is currently edited by Wolfgang Glänzel

More articles in Scientometrics from Springer, Akadémiai Kiadó
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().