Universality of citation distributions revisited

Authors:
Ludo Waltman;Nees Jan van Eck;Anthony F. J. van Raan
Affiliations:
Centre for Science and Technology Studies, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands;Centre for Science and Technology Studies, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands;Centre for Science and Technology Studies, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands
Venue:
Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology
Year:
2012

Citing 2
Cited 4

Universality of citation distributions–A validation of Radicchi et al.'s relative indicator cf = c-c0 at the micro level using data from chemistry

Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology
The skewness of science in 219 sub-fields and a number of aggregates

Scientometrics

Multiplicative and fractional strategies when journals are assigned to several subfields

Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology
How can journal impact factors be normalized across fields of science? An assessment in terms of percentile ranks and fractional counts

Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology
The role of statistics in establishing the similarity of citation distributions in a static and a dynamic context

Scientometrics
An empirical approach to compare the performance of heterogeneous academic fields

Scientometrics

Quantified Score

Hi-index	0.00

Visualization

Abstract

Radicchi, Fortunato, and Castellano (2008) claim that, apart from a scaling factor, all fields of science are characterized by the same citation distribution. We present a large-scale validation study of this universality-of-citation-distributions claim. Our analysis shows that claiming citation distributions to be universal for all fields of science is not warranted. Although many fields indeed seem to have fairly similar citation distributions, there are exceptions as well. We also briefly discuss the consequences of our findings for the measurement of scientific impact using citation-based bibliometric indicators.