nep-sog New Economics Papers
on Sociology of Economics
Issue of 2013‒01‒19
two papers chosen by
Jonas Holmström
Swedish School of Economics and Business Administration

  1. Journal Impact Factor, Eigenfactor, Journal Influence and Article Influence By Chia-Lin Chang; Michael McAleer; Les Oxley
  2. Uncertainty Measures for Economics Journal Impact Factors By David I. Stern

  1. By: Chia-Lin Chang (National Chung Hsing University); Michael McAleer (Erasmus University Rotterdam, Complutense University of Madrid, and Kyoto University); Les Oxley (University of Waikato)
    Abstract: This paper examines the practical usefulness of two new 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, and compares them with two existing ISI metrics, namely Total Citations and the 5-year Impact Factor (5YIF) of a journal (including journal self citations). 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. These empirical results are compared with existing results in the literature.
    Keywords: Journal performance metrics; Research assessment measures; Total citations; 5-year impact factor (5YIF); Eigenfactor; Journal and Article influence
    JEL: A12
    Date: 2013–01–04
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dgr:uvatin:20130002&r=sog
  2. By: David I. Stern
    Abstract: Academic economists appear to be intensely interested in rankings of journals, institutions, and individuals. Yet there is little discussion of the uncertainty associated with these rankings. To illustrate the uncertainty associated with citations-based rankings, I compute the standard error of the impact factor for all economics journals with a five-year impact factor in the 2011 Journal Citations Report. I use these to derive confidence intervals for the impact factors as well as ranges of possible rank for a subset of thirty journals. I find that the impact factors of the top two journals are well defined and set these journals apart in a clearly defined group. An elite group of 9-11 mainstream journals can also be fairly reliably distinguished. The four bottom ranked journals are also fairly clearly set apart. For the remainder of the distribution, confidence intervals overlap and rankings are quite uncertain.
    Keywords: academic, journals, economics
    JEL: A14
    Date: 2013–01
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:een:crwfrp:1302&r=sog

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