Related papers: A farewell to the MNCS and like size-independent i…
In a previous article of ours, we explained the reasons why the MNCS and all similar per-publication citation indicators should not be used to measure research performance, whereas efficiency indicators (output to input) such as the FSS are…
In a critical and provocative paper, Abramo and D'Angelo claim that commonly used scientometric indicators such as the mean normalized citation score (MNCS) are completely inappropriate as indicators of scientific performance. Abramo and…
Van Raan et al. (2010; arXiv:1003.2113) have proposed a new indicator (MNCS) for field normalization. Since field normalization is also used in the Leiden Rankings of universities, we elaborate our critique of journal normalization in…
In their article, entitled "Towards a new crown indicator: some theoretical considerations," Waltman et al. (2010; at arXiv:1003.2167) show that the "old crown indicator" of CWTS in Leiden was mathematically inconsistent and that one should…
When comparing the average citation impact of research groups, universities and countries, field normalisation reduces the influence of discipline and time. Confidence intervals for these indicators can help with attempts to infer whether…
Van Raan et al. (2010; arXiv:1003.2113) have proposed a new indicator (MNCS) for field normalization. Since field normalization is also used in the Leiden Rankings of universities, we elaborate our critique of journal normalization in…
Purpose: Analyze the diversity of citation distributions to publications in different research topics to investigate the accuracy of size-independent, rank-based indicators. Top percentile-based indicators are the most common indicators of…
In this paper, a new field-normalized indicator is introduced, which is rooted in early insights in bibliometrics, and is compared with several established field-normalized indicators (e.g. the mean normalized citation score, MNCS, and…
In the final analysis citation-based indicators are inferior to effective peer review and even peer review is flawed. It is impossible to accurately measure the value or impact of scientific research and a key task of scientometricians…
Following discussions in 2010 and 2011, scientometric evaluators have increasingly abandoned relative indicators in favor of comparing observed with expected citation ratios. The latter method provides parameters with error values allowing…
Over the past decade, national research evaluation exercises, traditionally conducted using the peer review method, have begun opening to bibliometric indicators. The citations received by a publication are assumed as proxy for its quality,…
Like it or not, attempts to evaluate and monitor the quality of academic research have become increasingly prevalent worldwide. Performance reviews range from at the level of individuals, through research groups and departments, to entire…
In previous papers it was demonstrated that lower performance groups have a larger size-dependent cumulative advantage for receiving citations than top-performance groups. Furthermore, regardless of performance, larger groups have less…
The size-dependent nature of the so-called group or departmental h-index is reconsidered in this paper. While the influence of unit size on such collective measures was already demonstrated a decade ago, institutional ratings based on this…
We address the question how citation-based bibliometric indicators can best be normalized to ensure fair comparisons between publications from different scientific fields and different years. In a systematic large-scale empirical analysis,…
The use of quantitative indicators of scientific productivity seems now quite widespread for assessing researchers and research institutions. There is a general perception, however, that these indicators are not necessarily representative…
In reaction to a previous critique(Opthof & Leydesdorff, 2010), the Center for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS) in Leiden proposed to change their old "crown" indicator in citation analysis into a new one. Waltman et al. (2011)argue…
The h-index is a popular bibliometric indicator for assessing individual scientists. We criticize the h-index from a theoretical point of view. We argue that for the purpose of measuring the overall scientific impact of a scientist (or some…
The two most used citation impact indicators in the assessment of scientific journals are, nowadays, the impact factor and the h-index. However, both indicators are not field normalized (vary heavily depending on the scientific category)…
Although altmetrics and other web-based alternative indicators are now commonplace in publishers' websites, they can be difficult for research evaluators to use because of the time or expense of the data, the need to benchmark in order to…