Abstract
One of the most crucial points of citation-based assessments is to find proper reference standards to which the otherwise meaningless plain citation counts can be compared. Using such standards, mere absolute numbers can be turned into relative indicators, suitable for cross-national and cross-field comparisons. In the present study, three possible choice of reference standards for citation assessments are discussed. Citation rates of publications under study can be compared to the average citation rates of the papers of the publishing journals to result inRelative Citation Rate (RCR), an indicator successfully used in several comparative scientometric analyses (see, e.g. Refs 1–5). A more “customized” reference set is defined by therelated records in the new CD Edition of theScience Citation Index database. Using the socalled “bibliographic coupling” technique, a set of papers with a high measure of similarity in their list of references is assigned to every single paper of the database. Beside of being an excellent retrieval tool, related records provide a suitable reference set to assess the relative standing of a given set of papers as measured by citation indicators. The third choice introduced in this study is specifically designed for assessing journals. For this purpose, the set of journals cited by the journal in question seems to be a useful basis to compare with. The pros and cons of the three choices are discussed and several examples are given.
Article PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.
References
T. Braun, W. Glänzel, A. Schubert,Scientometric Indicators. A 32-Country Comparative Evaluation of Publishing Performance and Citation Impact, World Scientific Publ. Co., Singapore-Philadelphia, 1985.
T. Braun, W. Glänzel, A. Schubert, One more version of the facts and figures on publication output and relative citation impact of 107 countries, 1978–1980,Scientometrics, 11 (1987) 9–15.
T. Braun, W. Glänzel, A. Schubert, One more version of the facts and figures on publication output and relative citation impact in the life sciences and chemistry, 1978–1980,Scientometrics, 11 (1987) 127–140.
T. Braun, W. Glänzel, A. Schubert, One more version of the facts and figures on publication output and relative citation impact in physics and mathematics, 1978–1980,Scientometrics, 12 (1987) 3–16.
T. Braun, W. Glänzel, A. Schubert, The newest version of the facts and figures on publication output and relative citation impact of 100 countries, 1981–1985,Scientometrics, 13 (1988) 181–188.
T. Braun, W. Glänzel, A. Schubert, The newest version of the facts and figures on publication output and relative citation impact in the life sciences and chemistry, 1981–1985,Scientometrics, 14 (1988) 3–15.
T. Braun, W. Glänzel, A. Schubert, The newest version of the facts and figures on publication output and relative citation impact in physics, engineering, and mathematics, 1981–1985,Scientometrics, 14 (1988) 365–382.
A. Schubert, W. Glänzel, T. Braun, Against absolute methods: Relative scientometric indicators and relational charts as evaluation tools, In:A.F.J. Van Raan (Ed.),Handbook of Quantitative Studies of Science and Technology, North Holland, Amsterdam, 1988, pp. 137–176.
T. Braun, W. Glänzel, A. Schubert, An alternative approach to the assessment of national performance in basic research, In:D. Evered, S. Harnett (Eds),The Evaluation of Scientific Research, Wiley, Chichester, 1989, pp. 32–45.
A. Schubert, W. Glänzel, T. Braun, Scientometric datafiles. A comprehensive set of indicators on 2649 journals and 96 countries in all major science fields and subfields, 1981–1985,Scientometrics, 16 (1989) 3–478.
F. Narin,Evaluative Bibliometrics: The Use of Publication and Citation Analysis in the Evaluation of Scientific Activity, Computer Horizons, Inc., Cherry Hill, 1976.
E. Garfield,Citation Indexing. Its Theory and Applications in Science, Technology and Humanities, Wiley, New York, 1979.
M.M. Kessler, Bibliographic coupling between scientific papers,American Documentation, 14 (1963) 10–25.
E. Garfield (Ed.),Science Citation Index, Journal Citation Reports. A Bibliometric Analysis of Science Journals in the ISI Database, Institute for Scientific Information, Philadelphia, PA, USA, from 1975 annually.
R. Todorov, W. Glänzel, Journal citation measures: A concise review,Journal of Information Science, 14 (1988) 47–56.
T. Braun, W. Glänzel, A. Schubert, Subject field characteristic scores and scales for assessing research performance,Scientometrics, 12 (1987) 267–292.
W. Glänzel, A. Schubert, Characteristic scores and scales in assessing citation impact,Journal of Information Science, 14 (1988) 123–127.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Schubert, A., Braun, T. Reference standards for citation based assessments. Scientometrics 26, 21–35 (1993). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02016790
Received:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02016790