Publication: On Measuring Scientific Influence
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2010-07-01
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2012-03-19
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Bibliometric measures based on citations are widely used in assessing the scientific publication records of authors, institutions and journals. Yet currently favored measures lack a clear conceptual foundation and are known to have counter-intuitive properties. The authors propose a new approach that is grounded on a theoretical "influence function," representing explicit prior beliefs about how citations reflect influence. They provide conditions for robust qualitative comparisons of influence -- conditions that can be implemented using readily-available data. An example is provided using the economics publication records of selected universities and the World Bank.
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“Ravallion, Martin; Wagstaff, Adam. 2010. On Measuring Scientific Influence. Policy Research working paper ; no. WPS 5375. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/3858 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
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