Open AccessHow to evaluate universities in terms of their relative citation impacts: Fractional counting of citations and the normalization of differences among disciplines
Author(s) -
Leydesdorff Loet,
Shin Jung C.
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
journal of the american society for information science and technology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1532-2890
pISSN - 1532-2882
DOI - 10.1002/asi.21511
Subject(s) - normalization (sociology) , scientometrics , citation , multidisciplinary approach , citation impact , ranking (information retrieval) , computer science , data science , statistics , information retrieval , mathematics , library science , sociology , social science
Fractional counting of citations can improve on ranking of multidisciplinary research units (such as universities) by normalizing the differences among fields of science in terms of differences in citation behavior. Furthermore, normalization in terms of citing papers abolishes the unsolved questions in scientometrics about the delineation of fields of science in terms of journals and normalization when comparing among different (sets of) journals. Using publication and citation data of seven Korean research universities, we demonstrate the advantages and the differences in the rankings, explain the possible statistics, and suggest ways to visualize the differences in (citing) audiences in terms of a network.