Credit where credit’s due: accounting for co-authorship in citation counts

Richard Tol

Scientometrics, 2011, vol. 89, issue 1, No 16, 299 pages

Abstract: Abstract I propose a new method (Pareto weights) to objectively attribute citations to co-authors. Previous methods either profess ignorance about the seniority of co-authors (egalitarian weights) or are based in an ad hoc way on the order of authors (rank weights). Pareto weights are based on the respective citation records of the co-authors. Pareto weights are proportional to the probability of observing the number of citations obtained. Assuming a Pareto distribution, such weights can be computed with a simple, closed-form equation but require a few iterations and data on a scholar, her co-authors, and her co-authors’ co-authors. The use of Pareto weights is illustrated with a group of prominent economists. In this case, Pareto weights are very different from rank weights. Pareto weights are more similar to egalitarian weights but can deviate up to a quarter in either direction (for reasons that are intuitive).

Keywords: Citations; Co-authors; Pareto distribution (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (19)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11192-011-0451-5 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
Working Paper: Credit Where Credit's Due: Accounting for Co-Authorship in Citation Counts (2011)
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:89:y:2011:i:1:d:10.1007_s11192-011-0451-5

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

DOI: 10.1007/s11192-011-0451-5

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 ().