The large-scale structure of journal citation networks

TL;DR

This paper investigates the large-scale structure of journal citation networks, revealing their density, robustness, small-world properties, and degree distribution characteristics using network science methods.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive analysis of journal citation network properties, highlighting their density, reciprocity, and degree distribution patterns, which were not previously characterized in detail.

Findings

The network is dense and robust.

Degree distributions have long tails with few vital journals.

In and out degrees are strongly positively correlated.

Abstract

We analyse the large-scale structure of the journal citation network built from information contained in the Thomson-Reuters Journal Citation Reports. To this end, we take advantage of the network science paraphernalia and explore network properties like density, percolation robustness, average and largest node distances, reciprocity, incoming and outgoing degree distributions, as well as assortative mixing by node degrees. We discover that the journal citation network is a dense, robust, small, and reciprocal world. Furthermore, in and out node degree distributions display long-tails, with few vital journals and many trivial ones, and they are strongly positively correlated.