A principal component analysis of 39 scientific impact measures

The impact of scientific publications has traditionally been expressed in terms of citation counts. However, scientific activity has moved online over the past decade. To better capture scientific impact in the digital era, a variety of new impact measures has been proposed on the basis of social ne...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:PloS one 2009-06, Vol.4 (6), p.e6022-e6022
Main Authors: Bollen, Johan, Van de Sompel, Herbert, Hagberg, Aric, Chute, Ryan
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Access to Information
Algorithms
Analysis
BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES
Bibliometrics
Centrality
Citation analysis
Citation indexes
Computer networks
Computer Science
Computer Science/Applications
Databases, Factual
Digital libraries
Geodesics
Hirsch index
Impact factors
Information Dissemination
Information processing
Information science
Journal Impact Factor
Laboratories
Library associations
Medical libraries
Network analysis
Periodicals as Topic - standards
Periodicals as Topic - trends
Principal Component Analysis
Principal components analysis
Publishing - standards
Publishing - trends
Science
Science & technology - other topics
Science Policy
Scientific papers
Scientific publishing
Search engines
Serials
Social network analysis
Social networks
Social organization
Society
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Summary:The impact of scientific publications has traditionally been expressed in terms of citation counts. However, scientific activity has moved online over the past decade. To better capture scientific impact in the digital era, a variety of new impact measures has been proposed on the basis of social network analysis and usage log data. Here we investigate how these new measures relate to each other, and how accurately and completely they express scientific impact. We performed a principal component analysis of the rankings produced by 39 existing and proposed measures of scholarly impact that were calculated on the basis of both citation and usage log data. Our results indicate that the notion of scientific impact is a multi-dimensional construct that can not be adequately measured by any single indicator, although some measures are more suitable than others. The commonly used citation Impact Factor is not positioned at the core of this construct, but at its periphery, and should thus be used with caution.
ISSN:1932-6203
1932-6203
DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0006022