Depth and breadth relevance in citation metrics

David I. Stern, Richard S.J. Tol*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to JournalArticleAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

The Euclidean length of a citation list is “depth relevant”: the metric increases when citations are transferred from less to more cited papers. We introduce “breadth relevance,” which favors consistent achievers over one-hit wonders. The exponent of the CES aggregator then is less than unity rather than greater than unity, as for depth relevance. Using two datasets on citations of economists for the top 50 US and global universities, simply counting citations maximizes the correlation between the citation metrics of researchers and the peer-reviewed rank of their department. However, citation depth may explain the allocation of researchers across lower-ranked departments.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)961-977
Number of pages17
JournalEconomic Inquiry
Volume59
Issue number3
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Jul 2021

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 Western Economic Association International

Copyright:
Copyright 2021 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.

Keywords

  • citations
  • rankings
  • research assessment

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Depth and breadth relevance in citation metrics'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this