Impact Factors and the Central Limit Theorem: Why Citation Averages Are Scale Dependent
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When journals are compared by impact indicators, differences in journal size should be taken into account.
“Even when journals are being compared by the values of impact indicators, the differences in size of the journals should be also taken into account [261].”
From Web of Science (WoS) and Scopus: The Titans of Bibliographic Information in Today’s Academic World (2021) · cites this paper as [261]
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Cites
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Flagged first, then by citations
2 of the 43 references couldn’t be matched to a known paper.
Research works printed but not linked: 3
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Self-citation
- Authors
- Antonoyiannakis, M.
- Affiliations
- American Physical Society (US)
- Corresponding author
- Antonoyiannakis, Manolis
- Venue
- Journal of Informetrics
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2018-11
- Volume
- 12
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 1072-1088
- ISSN
- 1751-1577 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2890727842
- Cited by
- 31
- References
- 43
- Citations by year
- 2026: 6 · 2025: 2 · 2024: 1 · 2023: 3 · 2022: 5 · 2021: 4 · 2020: 3 · 2019: 5 · 2018: 2
- FWCI
- 2.67
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- arxiv.org
- Locations
- Journal of Informetrics (publishedVersion)
- arXiv (Cornell University) (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Statistics, Probability and Uncertainty › scientometrics and bibliometrics research
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Information Systems › Web visibility and informetrics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Psychology Research and Bibliometrics
- Keywords
- journal impact factor, central limit theorem, scale dependence, journal size, citation distribution, physics journals, Journal Citation Reports
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Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
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