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on Sociology of Economics |
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Issue of 2014‒01‒17
five papers chosen by Jonas Holmström Swedish School of Economics and Business Administration |
| By: | Chang, C-L.; McAleer, M.J. |
| 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: | C3PO, IFI, PI-BETA, RAMs, STAR, article influence, eigenfactor, expert scores, h-index, harmonic mean, impact factor, journal quality, robustness |
| JEL: | C81 C83 |
| Date: | 2013–02–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ems:eureir:38715&r=sog |
| By: | Chang, C-L.; McAleer, M.J.; Oxley, L. |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the issue of coercive journal self citations and the practical usefulness of two recent journal performance metrics, namely the Eigenfactor score, which may be interpreted as measuring “Journal Influence”, and the Article Influence score, using the Thomson Reuters ISI Web of Science (hereafter ISI) data for 2009 for the 200 most highly cited journals in each of the Sciences and Social Sciences. The paper also compares the two new bibliometric measures with two existing ISI metrics, namely Total Citations and the 5-year Impact Factor (5YIF) (including journal self citations) of a journal. It is shown that the Sciences and Social Sciences are different in terms of the strength of the relationship of journal performance metrics, although the actual relationships are very similar. Moreover, the journal influence and article influence journal performance metrics are shown to be closely related empirically to the two existing ISI metrics, and hence add little in practical usefulness to what is already known, except for eliminating the pressure arising from coercive journal self citations. These empirical results are compared with existing results in the bibliometrics literature. |
| Keywords: | 5-year impact factor (5YIF), article influence, coercive journal self citations, eigenfactor, journal influence, journal performance metrics, research assessment measures, total citations |
| JEL: | A12 |
| Date: | 2013–03–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ems:eureir:39179&r=sog |
| By: | Hottenrott, Hanna; Lawson, Cornelia |
| Abstract: | This paper empirically investigates complementarities between different sources of research funding with regard to academic publishing. We find for a sample of UK engineering academics that competitive funding is associated with an increase in ex-post publications but that industry funding decreases the marginal utility of public funding by lowering the publication and citation rate increases associated with public grants. However, when holding all other explanatory variables at their mean, the negative effect of the interaction does not translate into an effective decrease in publication and citation numbers. The paper also shows that the positive effect of public funding is driven by UK research council and charity grants and that EU funding has no significant effect on publication outcomes. -- |
| Keywords: | Research Funding,University-Industry Collaboration,Scientific Productivity |
| JEL: | L31 O3 |
| Date: | 2013 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:dicedp:129&r=sog |
| By: | Chang, C-L.; McAleer, M.J. |
| Abstract: | As the preponderance of journal rankings becomes increasingly more frequent and prominent in academic decision making, such rankings in broad discipline categories is taking on an increasingly important role. The paper focuses on the robustness of rankings of academic journal quality and research impact using on the widely-used Thomson Reuters ISI Web of Science citations database (ISI) for the Statistics & Probability category. The paper analyses 110 ISI international journals in Statistics & Probability using quantifiable Research Assessment Measures (RAMs), and highlights the similarities and differences in various RAMs, which are based on alternative transformations of citations and influence. Alternative RAMs may be calculated annually or updated daily to determine When, Where and How (frequently) published papers are cited (see Chang et al. (2011a, b, c), Chang et al. (2012)). The RAMs are grouped in four distinct classes that include impact factor, mean citations and non-citations, journal policy, number of high quality papers, and journal influence and article influence. These classes include the most widely used RAMs, 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), Eigenfactor (or Journal Influence), Article Influence, h-index, PI-BETA (Papers Ignored - By Even The Authors), 5YD2 (= 5YIF/2YIF) as a measure of citations longevity, and Escalating Self Citations (ESC) as a measure of increasing journal self citations. The paper highlights robust rankings based on the harmonic mean of the ranks of RAMs across the 4 classes. It is shown that focusing solely on the 2-year impact factor (2YIF) 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 quality, impact and influence relative to the more robust harmonic mean of the ranks. |
| Keywords: | 5YD2, C3PO, ESC, IFI, PI-BETA, STAR, article influence, eigenfactor, h-index, harmonic mean of the ranks, impact factor, research assessment measures, robust journal rankings, statistics & probability |
| Date: | 2012–05–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ems:eureir:32529&r=sog |
| By: | Chang, C-L.; McAleer, M.J. |
| Abstract: | __Abstract __ The paper focuses on the robustness of rankings of academic journal quality and research impact of 10 leading econometrics journals taken from the Thomson Reuters ISI Web of Science (ISI) Category of Economics, using citations data from ISI and the highly accessible Research Papers in Economics (RePEc) database that is widely used in economics, finance and related disciplines. The journals are ranked using quantifiable static and dynamic Research Assessment Measures (RAMs), with 15 RAMs from ISI and 5 RAMs from RePEc. The similarities and differences in various RAMs, which are based on alternative weighted and unweighted transformations of citations, are highlighted to show which RAMs are able to provide informational value relative to others. The RAMs include the impact factor, mean citations and non-citations, journal policy, number of high quality papers, and journal influence and article influence. The paper highlight robust rankings based on the harmonic mean of the ranks of 20 RAMs, which in some cases are closely related. It is shown that emphasizing the most widely-used RAM, the 2-year impact factor of a journal, can lead to a distorted evaluation of journal quality, impact and influence relative to the harmonic mean of the ranks. |
| Keywords: | research assessment measures, citations, impact, influence, harmonic mean, robust journal rankings, econometrics |
| JEL: | C1 C81 Y10 |
| Date: | 2013–10–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ems:eureir:50130&r=sog |