Tove Faber Frandsen

What is in a name? Credit assignment practices in different disciplines

The paper reviews the literature on disciplinary credit assignment practices, and presents the results of a longitudinal study of credit assignment practices in the fields of economics, high energy physics, and information science. The practice of alphabetization of authorship is demonstrated to vary significantly between the fields. A slight increase is found to have taken place in economics during the last 30 years (1978–2007). A substantial decrease is found to have taken place in information science during the same period. High energy physics is found to be characterised by a high and stable share of alphabetized multi-authorships during the investigated period (1990–2007). It is important to be aware of such disciplinary differences when conducting bibliometric analyses.

Article impact calculated over arbitrary periods

In this paper we address the various formulations of impact of articles, usually groups of articles as gauged by citations that these articles receive over a certain period of time. The journal impact factor, as published by ISI - Institute for Scientific Information - (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania), is the best-known example of a formulation of impact of journals (considered as a set of articles) but many others have been defined in the literature. Impact factors have varying publication and citation periods and the chosen length of these periods enables, e.g., a distinction between synchronous and diachronous impact factors. It is shown how an impact factor for the general case can be defined. Two alternatives for a general impact factor are proposed, depending on whether different publication years are seen as a whole, and hence treating each one of them differently, or by operating with citation periods of identical length but allowing each publication period different starting points.

Journal self-citations—Analysing the JIF mechanism

This paper investigates the mechanism of the Journal Impact Factor (JIF). Although created as a journal selection tool the indicator is probably the central quantitative indicator for measuring journal quality. The focus is journal self-citations as the treatment of these in analyses and evaluations is highly disputed. The role of self-citations (both self-citing rate and self-cited rate) is investigated on a larger scale in this analysis in order to achieve statistical reliable material that can further qualify that discussion. Some of the hypotheses concerning journal self-citations are supported by the results and some are not.

Journal diffusion factors: a measure of diffusion?

This paper shows that the measure of diffusion introduced by Ian Rowlands called the journal diffusion factor (JDF) is highly negatively correlated with the number of citations, leading highly cited journals to get a low JDF, whereas less cited journals get a high JDF. This property reduces the utility of the JDF as a tool for evaluation of research influence. The paper presents a new definition of the JDF in order to attempt to improve it. This new JDF corrects the strong correlation with the number cited, but has a strongly statistically positive correlation with journal impact factors (JIF). However, the new JDF may still be used as an evaluation tool since, for journals with similar JIF values, the new JDF can be used to differentiate between them. Thereby, journal evaluation will be based on more than one aspect of journal influence when assessing journal influence with similar journal impact factor values.

Attracted to open access journals: a bibliometric author analysis in the field of biology

Purpose – Scholars from developing countries have limited access to research publications due to expensive subscription costs. However, the open access movement is challenging the constraint to access. Consequently, researchers in developing countries are often mentioned as major recipients of the benefits when advocating open access (OA). One of the implications of that argument is that authors from developing countries are more likely to perceive open access positively than authors from developed countries. The present study aims to investigate the use of open access by researchers from developing countries and is thus a supplement to the existing author surveys and interviews.Design/methodology/approach – Bibliometric analyses of both publishing behaviour and citing behaviour in relation to OA publishing provides evidence of the impact of open access on developing countries.Findings – The results of the multivariate linear regression show that open access journals are not characterised by a different c...

Journal citation identity and journal citation image: a portrait of the Journal of Documentation

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to propose a multiple set of journal evaluation indicators using methods and theories from author analysis. Among those are the journal citation identity and the journal citation image.Design/methodology/approach – The Journal of Documentation is celebrating its 60th anniversary, and for that reason it is portrayed in a bibliometric study using the two indicators, based, e.g. on analyses of references in journal articles and journal co‐citation analyses.Findings – The Journal of Documentation, which is portrayed in this study is characterized by high impact and high visibility. It publishes a relatively low number of documents with scientific content compared to other journals in the same field. It reaches far into the scientific community and belongs to a field that is more and more visible. The journal is relatively closely bounded to Western Europe, which is an increasing tendency.Research limitations/implications – The research is based on analyses of just three ...

The integration of open access journals in the scholarly communication system: Three science fields

The greatest number of open access journals (OAJs) is found in the sciences and their influence is growing. However, there are only a few studies on the acceptance and thereby integration of these OAJs in the scholarly communication system. Even fewer studies provide insight into the differences across disciplines. This study is an analysis of the citing behaviour in journals within three science fields: biology, mathematics, and pharmacy and pharmacology. It is a statistical analysis of OAJs as well as non-OAJs including both the citing and cited side of the journal to journal citations. The multivariate linear regression reveals many similarities in citing behaviour across fields and media. But it also points to great differences in the integration of OAJs. The integration of OAJs in the scholarly communication system varies considerably across fields. The implications for bibliometric research are discussed.

The Reference Return Ratio

The paper introduces a new journal impact measure called The Reference Return Ratio (3R). Unlike the traditional Journal Impact Factor (JIF), which is based on calculations of publications and citations, the new measure is based on calculations of bibliographic investments (references) and returns (citations). A comparative study of the two measures shows a strong relationship between the 3R and the JIF. Yet, the 3R appears to correct for citation habits, citation dynamics, and composition of document types – problems that typically are raised against the JIF. In addition, contrary to traditional impact measures, the 3R cannot be manipulated ad infinitum through journal self-citations.

The effects of open access on un-published documents: A case study of economics working papers

The use of scholarly publications that have not been formally published in e.g. journals is widespread in some fields. In the past they have been disseminated through various channels of informal communication. However, the Internet has enabled dissemination of these un-published and often unrefereed publications to a much wider audience. This is particularly interesting seen in relation to the highly disputed open access advantage as the potential advantage for low visibility publications has not been given much attention in the literature. The present study examines the role of working papers in economics during a 10-year period (1996–2005). It shows that working papers are increasingly becoming visible in the field specific databases. The impact of working papers is relatively low; however, high impact working paper series have citation rate levels similar to the low impact journals in the field. There is no tendency to an increase in impact during the 10 years which is the case for the high impact journals. Consequently, the result of this study does not provide evidence of an open access advantage for working papers in economics.

Journal interaction. A bibliometric analysis of economics journals

Purpose – Citation analysis is widely used as an evaluation method within sciences. The purpose of this paper is to use citation analyses to add insight into the interaction between economics journals. Design/methodology/approach – The paper presents a method of citation analysis using multiple linear regressions on both cited and citing economics journals. The proposed method controls for the different characteristics of the journals as well as for their degree of interaction. Findings – The paper shows some of the hidden structures within the science of economics that are determinants for the results from citation analysis. The analysis indicates several underlying factors within citation patterns in economics that should be accounted for when doing citation analysis for evaluation purposes. A journal is to a large extent self‐supplying with citations but, when this is extracted from the data, journals are dependent on similar journals – with respect to sub‐discipline, geography and JIF – to supply citations. Research limitations/implications – The analysis in this paper includes only a sub‐set of the journals of the science of economics and other sciences may exhibit other patterns and thus other underlying factors. Practical implications – In an evaluation that takes place across a wide board of sciences an analysis of both cited and citing journals may help to determine which factors should be taken into account in the evaluation. Originality/value – This type of analysis enables one to analyse some of the characteristics that separate the sciences.