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on Sociology of Economics |
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Issue of 2013‒03‒02
six papers chosen by Jonas Holmström Swedish School of Economics and Business Administration |
| By: | Chia-Lin Chang (National Chung Hsing University); Michael McAleer (Erasmus University Rotterdam, Complutense University of Madrid, Kyoto University) |
| Abstract: | Experts possess knowledge and information that are not publicly available. The paper is concerned with forecasting academic journal quality and research impact using a survey of international experts from a national project on ranking academic finance journals in Taiwan. A comparison is made with publicly available bibliometric data, namely the Thomson Reuters ISI Web of Science citations database (hereafter ISI) for the Business - Finance (hereafter Finance) category. The paper analyses the leading international journals in Finance using expert scores and quantifiable Research Assessment Measures (RAMs), and highlights the similarities and differences in the expert scores and alternative RAMs, where the RAMs are based on alternative transformations of citations taken from the ISI database. Alternative RAMs may be calculated annually or updated daily to answer the perennial questions as to When, Where and How (frequently) published papers are cited (see Chang et al. (2011a, b, c)). The RAMs include the most widely used RAM, namely the classic 2-year impact factor including journal self citations (2YIF), 2-year impact factor excluding journal self citations (2YIF*), 5-year impact factor including journal self citations (5YIF), Immediacy (or zero-year impact factor (0YIF)), Eigenfactor, Article Influence, C3PO (Citation Performance Per Paper Online), h-index, PI-BETA (Papers Ignored - By Even The Authors), 2-year Self-citation Threshold Approval Ratings (2Y-STAR), Historical Self-citation Threshold Approval Ratings (H-STAR), Impact Factor Inflation (IFI), and Cited Article Influence (CAI). As data are not available for 5YIF, Article Influence and CAI for 13 of the leading 34 journals considered, 10 RAMs are analysed for 21 highly-cited journals in Finance. The harmonic mean of the ranks of the 10 RAMs for the 34 highly-cited journals are also presented. It is shown that emphasizing the 2-year impact factor of a journal, which partly answers the question as to When published papers are cited, to the exclusion of other informative RAMs, which answer Where and How (frequently) published papers are cited, can lead to a distorted evaluation of journal impact and influence relative to the Harmonic Mean rankings. A linear regression model is used to forecast expert scores on the basis of RAMs that capture journal impact, journal policy, the number of high quality papers, and quantitative information about a journal. The robustness of the rankings is also analysed. |
| Keywords: | Expert scores; Journal quality; RAMs; Impact factor; IFI; C3PO; PI-BETA; STAR; Eigenfactor; Article Influence; h-index; harmonic mean; robustness |
| JEL: | C18 C81 C83 |
| Date: | 2013–02–18 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dgr:uvatin:20130029&r=sog |
| By: | Sina Önder, Ali (Uppsala Center for Fiscal Studies); Terviö, Marko (Aalto University and HECER) |
| Abstract: | We investigate divisions within the citation network in economics using citation data between 1990 and 2010. We consider all partitions of top institutions into two equal-sized clusters, and pick the one that minimizes cross-cluster citations. The strongest division is much stronger than could be expected to be found under idiosyncratic citation patterns, and is consistent with the reputed freshwater/saltwater division in macroeconomics. The division is stable over time, but varies across the fields of economics. |
| Keywords: | citations; clustering; influence; schools of thought |
| JEL: | A11 D85 I23 |
| Date: | 2013–02–13 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:uufswp:2013_003&r=sog |
| By: | Juan A. Crespo; Neus Herranz; Yunrongs Li; Javier Ruiz-Castillo |
| Abstract: | This paper studies the impact of differences in citation practices at the sub-field, or Web of Science subject category level using the model introduced in Crespo et al. (2012) according to which the number of citations received by an article depends on its underlying scientific influence and the field to which it belongs. We use the same Thomson Reuters dataset of about 4.4 million articles published in 1998-2003 with a fiveyear citation window used in Crespo et al. (2013) to analyze a classification system consisting of 22 broad fields. The main results are the following four. Firstly, as expected, when the classification system goes from 22 broad fields to 219 sub-fields the effect on citation inequality of differences in citation practices increases from approximately 14% at the field level to 18% at the sub-field level. Secondly, we estimate a set of exchange rates (ERs) to express the citation counts of articles in a wide quantile interval into the equivalent counts in the all-sciences case. For example, in the fractional case we find that in 187 out of 219 sub-fields the ERs are reliable in the sense that the coefficient of variation is smaller than or equal to 0.10. ERs are estimated over the [660, 978] interval that, on average, covers about 62% of all citations. Thirdly, in the fractional case the normalization of the raw data using the ERs (or sub-field mean citations) as normalization factors reduces the importance of the differences in citation practices from 18% to 3.8% (3.4%) of overall citation inequality. Fourthly, the results in the fractional case are essentially replicated when we adopt the multiplicative approach |
| Date: | 2013–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cte:werepe:we1303&r=sog |
| By: | Ho Fai Chan; Bruno S. Frey; Jana Gallus; Benno Torgler |
| Abstract: | Despite the social importance of awards, they have been largely disregarded by academic research in economics. This paper investigates whether a specific, yet important, award in economics, the John Bates Clark Medal, raises recipients’ subsequent research activity and status compared to a synthetic control group of nonrecipient scholars with similar previous research performance. We find evidence of positive incentive and status effects that raise both productivity and citation levels. |
| Keywords: | Awards, incentives, research, John Bates Clark Medal, synthetic control method |
| JEL: | A13 C23 M52 |
| Date: | 2013–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zur:econwp:111&r=sog |
| By: | David Pontille (Centre de Sociologie de l'Innovation, Mines ParisTech); Didier Torny (Risques, Travail, Marchés, État (RiTME), INRA (UR 1323)) |
| Abstract: | From a perspective informed by science and technology studies, the authors propose to establish a general diagnosis on the regulation of publication practices and suggest methods of analysis by drawing on old and recent cases that have been questionning research integrity. |
| Keywords: | science and technology studies; sciences; research; researcher; article; journal; peer-reviewing; prevention; biomedical information; reliability |
| JEL: | I28 I15 Z13 |
| Date: | 2013–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:emn:wpaper:031&r=sog |
| By: | Bobtcheff, Catherine (Toulouse School of Economics (CNRS, LERNA)); Bolte, Jérôme (Toulouse School of Economics (GREMAQ)); Mariotti, Thomas (Toulouse School of Economics (CNRS, GREMAQ, IDEI)) |
| Abstract: | We model academic competition as a game in which researchers ¯ght for priority. Researchers privately experience breakthroughs and decide how long to let their ideas mature before making them public, thereby establishing priority. In a two-researcher, symmetric environment, the resulting preemption game has a unique equilibrium. We study how the shape of the breakthrough distribution affects equilibrium maturation delays. Making researchers better at discovering new ideas or at developing them has contrasted effects on the quality of research outputs. Finally, when researchers have different innovative abilities, speed of discovery and maturation of ideas are positively correlated in equilibrium. |
| Keywords: | Academic Competition, Preemption Games, Private Information. |
| JEL: | C73 D82 |
| Date: | 2013–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tse:wpaper:26783&r=sog |