Abstract
Citations from 1980 to 1988, obtained from fifty biomedical journals covered by theJournal Citation Reports (JCR) are studied. In purely numerical terms, the evolution of each citation (journal citation), including its impact factor (IF), would depend essentially on three variables for each journal: (i) the yearly rate of increase of items that could be cited (citable items), (ii) the relative yearly increment of the citing journals, (iii) the relative yearly increment of citations. The mechanics of this give rise to the three standard patterns for journal citations, namely: (i) annual impact factors increase each year (ascending evolution), (ii) annual impact factors remain the same each year (constant evolution), (iii) annual impact factors decrease each year (descending evolution). The reason why some journal citation profiles do not fit into the standard patterns is presumably that forces are at work able to alter the numerical mechanics described. The concepts of saturation/unsaturation of the demand for scientific information are introduced, showing how they are reflected in the impact factor figures for the journals cited.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Journal Citation Reports (JCR). A Bibliometric Analysis of Science Journals in the ISI Data Base. Institute for Scientific Information. Philadelphia. 1975–1988 Annual Volumes.E. Garfield (ed.).
R. Todorov, W. Glänzel, Journal citation measures. A concise review,Journal of Information Science, 14 (1988) 47–56.
P. Vinkler, An attempt of surveying and classifying bibliometrics indications for scientific purposes,Scientometrics, 13 (1988) 239–259.
E. Garfield, Citation Analysis as a tool in journal evaluation,Science, 178 (1972) 471–479.
A. Sandison, Thinking about citation analysis,Journal of Documentation, 45 (1989) 59–64.
N. Midorikawa, H. Ogawa, K. Saito, M. Kanedo, H. Itsumara, The relationship among the citation measures and the factors influence on them,Information Services and Use, 4 (1984) 417–424.
G. Hirts, Discipline impact factors: a method for determining core journals list,Journal of American Society for Information Science 29 (1978) 171–172.
A. Schubert, T. Braun, Relative indicators and relational charts for comparative assessment of publications output and citation impact,Scientometrics, 9 (1986) 281–291.
M. Bonitz, Journal ranking by selective impact. New method based on SDI results and journal impact factors,Scientometrics, 7 (1985) 471–485.
P. Nieuwenhuysen, Journal citation measures taking into account their fluctuations from year to year.Journal Information Science, 15 (1989) 175–178.
C. Tomer, A statistical assessment of two measures of citation: the impact factor and the immediacy index,Information Processing and Management, 22 (1986) 251–258.
L. Egghe, Mathematical relations between impact factors and average number of citations,Information Processing and Management, 24 (1988) 567–576.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Ferreiro, L., Ugena, S. Citation mechanics in Journals covered by the journal citation reports. Scientometrics 24, 149–162 (1992). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02026478
Received:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02026478