nep-sog New Economics Papers
on Sociology of Economics
Issue of 2011‒04‒16
two papers chosen by
Jonas Holmström
Swedish School of Economics and Business Administration

  1. Outerfactor and the indirect journal impact By Coralio, Ballester; Alfonso, Rosa-Garcia
  2. Measuring economic journals’ citation efficiency: A data envelopment analysis approach By Halkos, George; Tzeremes, Nickolaos

  1. By: Coralio, Ballester; Alfonso, Rosa-Garcia
    Abstract: In this paper, we use research chains across the citation graph as the basis for journal impact analysis. While some existing measures take into account research chains that end in a given journal, we calculate the proportion of research chains that include a journal, obtaining a new index of journal impact, Outerfactor, that is directly related to Pagerank (Brin and Page, 1998), Eigenfactor (Bergstrom, 2007) and the Invariant Method (Pinsky and Narin, 1976). In this way, the Outerfactor score obtained by each journal is independent on its own citation pattern and its article share. To our knowledge, this is the fi…rst measure that satis…fes these invariance properties whilst accounting for both direct and indirect impact. Based on research chains that connect two journals, we also construct new measures for analyzing cross-impact. This cross-impact analysis results in a two-fold view of Outerfactor in terms of a journal's influence (impact) on other journals, or a journal's contribution to all journals' impact scores. Finally, we provide an illustration with 60 economics journals, showing how Outerfactor performs compared to other measures: apart from its cardinal invariance, Outerfactor behaves more robustly to ordinal manipulation than other eigenvector-based measures.
    Keywords: citation analysis; impact factor; eigenfactor; eigenvector-based measures; manipulation
    JEL: D85
    Date: 2011–03–24
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:29852&r=sog
  2. By: Halkos, George; Tzeremes, Nickolaos
    Abstract: This paper by using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and statistical inference evaluates the citation performance of 229 economic journals. The paper categorizes the journals into four main categories (A to D) based on their efficiency levels. The results are then compared to the 27 “core economic journals” as introduced by Dimond (1989). The results reveal that after more than twenty years Diamonds’ list of “core economic journals” is still valid. Finally, for the first time the paper uses data from four well-known databases (SSCI, Scopus, RePEc, Econlit) and two quality ranking reports (Kiel Institute internals ranking and ABS quality ranking report) in a DEA setting and in order to derive the ranking of 229 economic journals. The ten economic journals with the highest citation performance are Journal of Political Economy, Econometrica, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Journal of Financial Economics, Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Review, Review of Economic Studies, Journal of Econometrics, Journal of Finance, Brookings Papers on Economic Activity.
    Keywords: Ranking journals; Data Envelopment Analysis; Indexing techniques; Nonparametric analysis
    JEL: C14 C02 C61 C67
    Date: 2011–03
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:29893&r=sog

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