Relative Citation Ratio (RCR): An empirical attempt to study a new field-normalized bibliometric indicator

TL;DR

This paper evaluates the Relative Citation Ratio (RCR), a new bibliometric impact indicator, by comparing it with existing metrics and peer assessments, revealing high correlation with established indicators but only moderate correlation with peer reviews.

Contribution

It provides an empirical analysis of RCR's validity and its correlation with other impact measures and peer evaluations.

Findings

RCR correlates highly with established field-normalized indicators.

RCR shows only low to medium correlation with peer assessments.

The study offers insights into RCR's effectiveness as a bibliometric tool.

Abstract

Hutchins, Yuan, M., and Santangelo (2015) proposed the Relative Citation Ratio (RCR) as a new field-normalized impact indicator. This study investigates the RCR by correlating it on the level of single publications with established field-normalized indicators and assessments of the publications by peers. We find that the RCR correlates highly with established field-normalized indicators, but the correlation between RCR and peer assessments is only low to medium.