Environment and Planning B as a Journal: The interdisciplinarity of its environment and the citation impact

TL;DR

This paper analyzes the citation network of Environment and Planning B to understand its interdisciplinary influence and citation impact, highlighting its position between social and natural sciences.

Contribution

It introduces a network-based visualization method to assess citation impact and interdisciplinarity, correcting for self-citations and analyzing citing and cited patterns.

Findings

Environment and Planning B is cited across social and natural sciences.

Authors predominantly cite within the social sciences domain.

The journal's citation impact can be visualized through network clustering.

Abstract

The citation impact of Environment and Planning B can be visualized using its citation relations with journals in its environment as the links of a network. The size of the nodes is varied in correspondence to the relative citation impact in this environment. Additionally, one can correct for the effect of within-journal "self"-citations. The network can be partitioned and clustered using algorithms from social network analysis. After transposing the matrix in terms of rows and columns, the citing patterns can be mapped analogously. Citing patterns reflect the activity of the community of authors who publish in the journal, while being cited indicates reception. Environment and Planning B is cited across the interface between the social sciences and the natural sciences, but its authors cite almost exclusively from the domain of the Social Science Citation Index.