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The effect of additional citations in the stability of Journal Citation Report categories

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Abstract

We use a new approach to study the ranking of journals in JCR categories. The objectives of this study were to empirically evaluate the effect of increases in citations on the computation of the journal impact factor (JIF) for a large set of journals as measured by changes in JIF, and to ascertain the influence of additional citations on the rank order of journals according their new JIFs within JCR groups. To do so, modified JIFs were computed by adding additional citations to the number used by Thomson-Reuters to compute the JIF of journals listed in the JCR for 2008. We considered the effect on rank order of a given journal of adding 1, 2, 3 or more citations to the number used to compute the JIF, keeping everything else equal (i.e., without changing the JIF of other journals in a given group). The effect of additional citations on the internal structure of rankings in JCR groups increased with the number of citations added. In about one third of JCR groups, about half the journals changed their rank order when 1–5 citations were added. However, in general the rank order tended to be relatively stable after small increases in citations.

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Acknowledgments

We thank K. Shashok for improving the use of English in the manuscript and two anonymous referees for their suggestions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Departamento de Física y Matemáticas, Universidad de Alcalá, 28871, Alcalá de Henares, Madrid, Spain

    Juan Miguel Campanario & William Cabos

Authors
  1. Juan Miguel Campanario
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  2. William Cabos
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Juan Miguel Campanario.

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Table a

Percentage of journals in each JCR group that experienced a change in CR when JIF1 was computed. (DOC 241 kb)

Table b

Percentage of journals in each JCR group that experienced a change in CR when JIF5 was computed. (DOC 319 kb)

Table c

Percentage of journals in each JCR group that experienced a change in CR when JIF10 was computed. (DOC 396 kb)

Table d

Percentage of journals in every JCR group that needed a minimum of 1, 2, 3 or more citations (up to 10) to improve their rank order. (DOC 263 kb)

Table e

Mean of CR1, CR5 and CR10 for each group and quartile in JCR group with 50 or more journals. (DOC 208 kb)

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Campanario, J.M., Cabos, W. The effect of additional citations in the stability of Journal Citation Report categories. Scientometrics 98, 1113–1130 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-013-1116-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-013-1116-3

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