The citation-based indicator and combined impact indicator - New options for measuring impact

TL;DR

This paper introduces two new impact metrics, CBI and CII, that simplify citation analysis by avoiding complex percentile rank issues, especially effective for small datasets, and demonstrate high correlation with existing indicators.

Contribution

The paper proposes the citation-based indicator and combined impact indicator as simpler, more reliable alternatives to percentile rank metrics for measuring scholarly impact.

Findings

CII reflects citation impact more accurately.

CBI and CII are highly correlated with existing indicators.

Special calculation is unnecessary for datasets with fewer than 100 papers.

Abstract

Metrics based on percentile ranks (PRs) for measuring scholarly impact involves complex treatment because of various defects such as overvaluing or devaluing an object caused by percentile ranking schemes, ignoring precise citation variation among those ranked next to each other, and inconsistency caused by additional papers or citations. These defects are especially obvious in a small-sized dataset. To avoid the complicated treatment of PRs based metrics, we propose two new indicators - the citation-based indicator (CBI) and the combined impact indicator (CII). Document types of publications are taken into account. With the two indicators, one would no more be bothered by complex issues encountered by PRs based indicators. For a small-sized dataset with less than 100 papers, special calculation is no more needed. The CBI is based solely on citation counts and the CII measures the integrate contributions of publications and citations. Both virtual and empirical data are used so as to compare the effect of related indicators. The CII and the PRs based indicator I3 are highly correlated but the former reflects citation impact more and the latter relates more to publications.