Journal topic citation potential and between-field comparisons: The topic normalized impact factor

• Published in: Journal of informetrics Vol. 8; no. 2; pp. 406 - 418
• Main Authors: Dorta-González, Pablo, Dorta-González, María Isabel, Santos-Peñate, Dolores Rosa, Suárez-Vega, Rafael
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford Elsevier Ltd 01.04.2014; Elsevier Science Ltd
• Subjects: Bibliometric indicator; Bibliometrics; Citation analysis; Citation potential; Comparisons; Impact factors; Journal assessment; Journal impact factor; Journal metric; Source normalization; Subject fields; Journal impact factor; Journal assessment; Journal metric; Citation analysis; Citation potential; Source normalization; Bibliometric indicator
• ISSN: 1751-1577; 1875-5879
• DOI: 10.1016/j.joi.2014.01.013

•We provide a source normalization approach based on a new definition of journal topic.•We compare it with some traditional journal impact indicators.•Our topic normalized impact factor reduces the between-group variance in relation to the within-group variance. The journal impact factor is not comparable among fields of science and social science because of systematic differences in publication and citation behavior across disciplines. In this work, a source normalization of the journal impact factor is proposed. We use the aggregate impact factor of the citing journals as a measure of the citation potential in the journal topic, and we employ this citation potential in the normalization of the journal impact factor to make it comparable between scientific fields. An empirical application comparing some impact indicators with our topic normalized impact factor in a set of 224 journals from four different fields shows that our normalization, using the citation potential in the journal topic, reduces the between-group variance with respect to the within-group variance in a higher proportion than the rest of indicators analyzed. The effect of journal self-citations over the normalization process is also studied.