About the statistical relationship between expert judgment for scientific journals and their impact factors

Author(s):  S.V.Marvin, candidate of Sciences, associate Professor, Ural Federal University named after the first President of Russia B.N. Yeltsin , Yekaterinburg, Russia, s.v.marvin@yandex.ru

Issue:  Volume 44, № 4

Rubric:  Sociology and Social Technologies

Annotation:  The article addressed to the problem of the statistical relationship (correlation) between citation of individual articles or magazines in general on the one hand and a real assessment of the scientific community on the other hand. The problem is studied in relation to applied mathematics; it is based on research, organized by the Australian Research Council (with the assistance of various public organizations and experts) in the 2010 year. Data fr om these researches appear to be interesting, because they formed the basis for the article «Nefarious numbers», which won wide popularity and became fundamental for the science studies (in the problem, relating to value of the probabilistic relationship between citation and scientific significance). Statistics data of «Nefarious numbers» reproduced in details and accurately researched by methods of the correlation analysis (as opposed to an externally and popular presentation of the «Nefarious numbers», wh ere methods of the correlation analysis in no way demonstrated). As a result, the conclusions of the «Nefarious numbers» are specified and complemented to some extent. The article can be useful for research in the scientometrics and the sociology of science. The algorithm of comprehensive and wide applying methods of the correlation analysis to the category “Mathematics, Applied”, which described in the article, can be generalized and used without changes to any other category of science, about which there is ambiguity and questions in the value of the statistical relationship between citation and scientific significance.

Keywords:  scientometrics, citation, impact factor, expert judgment, journal quality rating

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