JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR INFORMATION SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY; 2008; 59(10):1653 - 1661

Appropriate similarity measures for author co-citation analysis

Authors: van Eck NJ, Waltman L
Affiliations: Erasmus Univ

Abstract:
We provide in this article a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author co-citation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors' co-citation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. We show by means of an example that the choice of an appropriate similarity measure has a high practical relevance. Finally, we discuss the use of similarity measures for statistical inference.

Publication type:
Article in Journal

  
Authors (2)
  
MSc L. (Ludo) Waltman
Centre for Science and Technology Studies
Researcher. MSc in Economics & Informatics from Erasmus University Rotterdam (2005). Currently working on a PhD thesis in economics at Erasmus University Rotterdam. Working at CWTS from June 2009. Involved in various science mapping projects. Main research interests are science mapping and ...
Dr. N.J. (Nees Jan) van Eck
Researcher. MSc in Economics & Informatics from Erasmus University Rotterdam (2005). Currently working on a PhD thesis on science mapping at Erasmus University Rotterdam. Working at CWTS from November 2008. Involved in various science mapping projects, and working on the development of science ...