Towards a new crown indicator: Some theoretical considerations

TL;DR

This paper critically examines the theoretical foundations of the crown indicator, a bibliometric tool, and proposes a new version based on a more consistent normalization mechanism with better properties.

Contribution

It introduces a new crown indicator that uses an alternative normalization mechanism with improved theoretical properties compared to the original.

Findings

The alternative normalization mechanism has better consistency properties.

The original crown indicator's normalization mechanism lacks the desired theoretical properties.

A new crown indicator is proposed based on the alternative mechanism.

Abstract

The crown indicator is a well-known bibliometric indicator of research performance developed by our institute. The indicator aims to normalize citation counts for differences among fields. We critically examine the theoretical basis of the normalization mechanism applied in the crown indicator. We also make a comparison with an alternative normalization mechanism. The alternative mechanism turns out to have more satisfactory properties than the mechanism applied in the crown indicator. In particular, the alternative mechanism has a so-called consistency property. The mechanism applied in the crown indicator lacks this important property. As a consequence of our findings, we are currently moving towards a new crown indicator, which relies on the alternative normalization mechanism.