Methods to account for citation inflation in research evaluation
Methods to account for citation inflation in research evaluation
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DOI：
10.1016/j.respol.2019.04.009
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发表时间：
2019-09-01
期刊：
影响因子：
7.2
通讯作者：
Fortunato, Santo
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Petersen, Alexander M.;Pan, Raj K.;Fortunato, Santo
定量研究评估需要透明、相对简单、没有学科和时间偏见的措施。我们的文件，并提供了一个解决方案，迄今未解决的时间偏差-引用通货膨胀-这是从一个基本事实，即科学出版物正在稳步增长，每年约4%。此外，由于引文的总产量每12年增长2倍，这意味着引文的真实的价值取决于它是何时产生的。因此，未能将名义引用值转换为真实的引用值会导致对科学影响的严重错误测量。为了解决这个问题，我们开发了一种引用缩减指数方法，概述了使用Web of Science门户网站推广和实施该方法的步骤，并分析了来自生物学和物理学的大量研究人员，以证明两种常见的评估指标-总引用和h指数-可以根据基础引用计数是否被缩减而显著不同。特别是，我们的研究结果表明，前几代人的科学影响很可能被大大低估时，引用不放气，往往由100%或更多的名义价值。因此，我们的研究指出，有必要对用于评估引文影响力的计数方法进行系统性改革-特别是在研究人员，期刊和机构的情况下-这可能跨越几十年，因此有几个倍增期。
Quantitative research evaluation requires measures that are transparent, relatively simple, and free of disciplinary and temporal bias. We document and provide a solution to a hitherto unaddressed temporal bias - citation inflation - which arises from the basic fact that scientific publication is steadily growing at roughly 4% per year. Moreover, because the total production of citations grows by a factor of 2 every 12 years, this means that the real value of a citation depends on when it was produced. Consequently, failing to convert nominal citation values into real citation values produces significant mis-measurement of scientific impact. To address this problem, we develop a citation deflator method, outline the steps to generalize and implement it using the Web of Science portal, and analyze a large set of researchers from biology and physics to demonstrate how two common evaluation metrics - total citations and h-index - can differ by a remarkable amount depending on whether the underlying citation counts are deflated or not. In particular, our results show that the scientific impact of prior generations is likely to be significantly underestimated when citations are not deflated, often by 100% or more of the nominal value. Thus, our study points to the need for a systemic overhaul of the counting methods used evaluating citation impact - especially in the case of researchers, journals, and institutions - which can span several decades and thus several doubling periods.