Real influence: A novel approach to characterize the visibility of journals and publications

[EN] For the last 50 years, the journal impact factor (IF) has been the most prominent of all bibliometric indicators. Since the first Journal Citation Report was launched, the IF has been used, often improperly, to evaluate institutions, publications, and individuals. Its well-known significant tec...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Perianes Rodríguez, Antonio, Mira, Bianca S., Martínez Ávila, Daniel, Grácio, Maria Cláudia Cabrini
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Estado:Versión enviada para evaluación y publicación
Fecha de publicación:2024
País:España
Institución:Universidad de León
Repositorio:BULERIA. Repositorio Institucional de la Universidad de León
OAI Identifier:oai:buleria.unileon.es:10612/22639
Acceso en línea:https://hdl.handle.net/10612/22639
https://doi.org/10.1162/qss_a_00316
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Biblioteconomía
Citation analysis
Citation distributions
Journal impact factor
Percentiles
Skewness of science
5701.06 Documentación
Descripción
Sumario:[EN] For the last 50 years, the journal impact factor (IF) has been the most prominent of all bibliometric indicators. Since the first Journal Citation Report was launched, the IF has been used, often improperly, to evaluate institutions, publications, and individuals. Its well-known significant technical limitations have not detracted from its popularity, and they contrast with the lack of consensus over the numerous alternatives suggested as complements or replacements. This paper presents a percentile-distribution-based proposal for assessing the influence of scientific journals and publications that corrects several of the IF’s main technical limitations using the same set of documents as is used to calculate the IF. Nearly 400 journals of Library Science and Information Science and Biochemistry and Molecular Biology categories were analyzed for this purpose. The results show that the new indicator retains many of its predecessor’s advantages and adds benefits of its own: It is more accurate, more gaming resistant, more complete, and less influenced by the citation window or extreme observations.