A new Normalized Index for Ranking Papers in Systematic Literature Reviews

Abstract

The number of journals, and consequently the number of papers, has grown significantly, which makes it necessary to use suitable tools in systematic literature reviews. Several methodologies have been proposed for this purpose, and one of these methods is the index calculation used to rank the papers in order of importance. This study proposes a new index called the Normalized Index for Ranking Papers to rank the papers in a systematic literature review, which is considered mainly indicators provided by the Centre for Science and Technology Studies journal indicators. For this index calculation, importance weights are assigned by the researchers, and the indicators used in the index are normalized. For ranking the final portfolio, the proposed method considers a weighted average of indicators (impact factors) in which the paper was published and a value that represents approximately the number of citations per year. The journal self-citation index benefits the journals with lower self-citation practices. A Systematic Literature Review (SLR) was carried out to analyze the final portfolio’s results involving Multi-criteria Decision Analysis in airports. The indicators normalization enables the importance of each metric to be decided by the researcher according to the choice of the weights, not by the difference in the indicators’ magnitude. The importance of an article can be proved initially by the journal indicators in which the paper was published and by citations per year.