Producción, centralidad e impacto: correlaciones entre diferentes métricas en el campo del turismo en Brasil

Abstract

In the last decades, bibliometric metrics have been used to assess the quantity and quality of production in different areas of knowledge. Often, a single metric is used to rank researchers and institutions, without, in some cases, justification for its choice. There are, in literature, studies that build rankings of authors and institutions, using production and impact. However, there are still few surveys that discuss whether the use of different metrics generates rankings that are more similar or different from each other. There is also little use of centrality in the field of tourism in Brazil. We calculate and correlate a set of production, centrality, and impact metrics, which are regularly used to build rankings, through 3,887 articles from 16 Brazilian tourism journals (1990-2018). Depending on the metrics applied, the rankings created are more similar or divergent from each other. The collection of data from primary sources and their review was done manually. The calculation of correlations was made for absolute values and ranking positions. The main result is to show that rankings based on a low number of metrics, mainly from the same group, can ignore important points in the performance of authors, institutions, and countries. It is also shown that several correlations are not as high as expected (e.g., between centrality and impact metrics).