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Comparing Bibliometric Analysis Using PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science Databases
Published on: October 24, 2019
The citation merit of scientific publications
Juan A Crespo1, Ignacio Ortuño-Ortín, Javier Ruiz-Castillo
1Departamento de Economía Cuantitativa, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Madrid, Spain. juan.crespo@uam.es
Abstract:
We propose a new method to assess the merit of any set of scientific papers in a given field based on the citations they receive. Given a field and a citation impact indicator, such as the mean citation or the [Formula: see text]-index, the merit of a given set of [Formula: see text] articles is identified with the probability that a randomly drawn set of [Formula: see text] articles from a given pool of articles in that field has a lower citation impact according to the indicator in question. The method allows for comparisons between sets of articles of different sizes and fields. Using a dataset acquired from Thomson Scientific that contains the articles published in the periodical literature in the period 1998-2007, we show that the novel approach yields rankings of research units different from those obtained by a direct application of the mean citation or the [Formula: see text]-index.
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