Four pitfalls in normalizing citation indicators: An investigation of ESI’s selection of highly cited papers

作者：

Highlights：

• Papers published in January could be 40 times easier to be selected as a Highly Cited Paper (HCP) than those in January.

• 1/4 of the total HCPs in Engineering are unqualified if judged by their online years instead of publication years.

• The number of some journals’ HCPs could reduce by half if they recategorized to a field with higher threshold.

• In research fields of health sciences, reviews could account for 2/3 of the total HCPs.

摘要

•Papers published in January could be 40 times easier to be selected as a Highly Cited Paper (HCP) than those in January.•1/4 of the total HCPs in Engineering are unqualified if judged by their online years instead of publication years.•The number of some journals’ HCPs could reduce by half if they recategorized to a field with higher threshold.•In research fields of health sciences, reviews could account for 2/3 of the total HCPs.

论文关键词：Normalized citation impact,Essential science indicators,Highly cited papers,Publication month,Online-to-print delays,Citation impact indicators,Journal-to-field classification

论文评审过程：Received 8 April 2018, Revised 10 September 2018, Accepted 10 September 2018, Available online 25 September 2018, Version of Record 25 September 2018.

论文官网地址：https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joi.2018.09.006