Annual Journal Citation Indices: A Comparative Study

Abdul Khaleque^1*, Arnab Chatterjee^2,†, Parongama Sen^1,‡

¹Department of Physics, University of Calcutta, 92 A P C Road, Kolkata 700 009, India

²Condensed Matter Physics Division, Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics, A/AF Bidhannagar, Kolkata 700 064, India

Abstract:

We study the statistics of citations made to the indexed Science journals in the Journal Citation Reports during the period 2004-2013 using different measures. We consider different measures which quantify the impact of the journals. To our surprise, we find that the apparently uncorrelated measures, even when defined in an arbitrary manner, show strong correlations. This is checked over all the years considered. Impact factor being one of these measures, the present work raises the question whether it is actually a nearly perfect index as claimed often. In addition, we study the distributions of the different indices which also behave similarly.