Do Article Influence scores overestimate the citation impact of social science journals in subfields that are related to higher-impact natural science disciplines? |
| |
| Institution: | 1. Instituto de Turismo y Desarrollo Económico Sostenible Tides, Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain;2. Departamento de Estadística, Investigación Operativa y Computación, Universidad de La Laguna, Spain;1. CNRS (LAMSADE, UMR 7243) & Université Paris Dauphine, Place du Maréchal de Lattre de Tassigny, F-75775 Paris Cedex 16, France;2. Ghent University, Department of Data Analysis, H. Dunantlaan, 1, B-9000 Gent, Belgium |
| |
| Abstract: | Unlike Impact Factors (IF), Article Influence (AI) scores assign greater weight to citations that appear in highly cited journals. The natural sciences tend to have higher citation rates than the social sciences. We might therefore expect that relative to IF, AI overestimates the citation impact of social science journals in subfields that are related to (and presumably cited in) higher-impact natural science disciplines. This study evaluates that assertion through a set of simple and multiple regressions covering seven social science disciplines: anthropology, communication, economics, education, library and information science, psychology, and sociology. Contrary to expectations, AI underestimates 5IF (five-year Impact Factor) for journals in science-related subfields such as scientific communication, science education, scientometrics, biopsychology, and medical sociology. Journals in these subfields have low AI scores relative to their 5IF values. Moreover, the effect of science-related status is considerable—typically 0.60 5IF units or 0.50 SD. This effect is independent of the more general finding that AI scores underestimate 5IF for higher-impact journals. It is also independent of the very modest curvilinearity in the relationship between AI and 5IF. |
| |
| Keywords: | Bias Eigenfactor Interdisciplinary Journal Citation Reports Multidisciplinary Web of Science |
| 本文献已被 ScienceDirect 等数据库收录！ |
|
