A Correlation Analysis of Normalized Indicators of Citation

Abstract

Recently, more and more countries are entering the global race for university competitiveness. On the one hand, global rankings are a convenient tool for quantitative analysis. On the other hand, their indicators are often difficult to quickly calculate and they often contradict each other. The author of this paper hoped to use widely available indicators for a quick analysis of the University’s publication strategy and opted for the normalized citation indicators available in the SciVal analytical tool, namely, Source Normalized Impact per Paper (SNIP) and Field-Weighted Citation Impact (FWCI). The author demonstrated the possibility of applying the correlation analysis to the impact indicators of a document and a journal on a sample of social and humanitarian fields at Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia (PFUR, “RUDN” in Russian). A dot diagram of university (or country) documents was used to form a two-factor matrix (SNIP and FWCI) that was further divided into four quadrants. Such an analysis illustrated the present situation in that discipline. An analysis of the RUDN university publications revealed problems and prospects in the development of social sciences and humanities. A serious problem observed was that high-quality results were often published in low-impact journals that narrowed the results’ potential audience and, accordingly, the number of citations. A particular attention was paid to the application of the results in practice.