Assessment of journal similarity based on citing discipline analysis
This study compares the range of disciplines of citing journal articles to determine how closely related journals assigned to the same Web of Science research area are. The frequency distribution of disciplines by citing articles provides a signature for a cited journal that permits it to be compared with other journals using similarity comparison techniques. As an initial exploration, citing discipline data for 40 high-impact-factor journals assigned to the information science and library science category of the Web of Science were compared across 5 time periods. Similarity relationships were determined using multidimensional scaling and hierarchical cluster analysis to compare the outcomes produced by the proposed citing discipline and established cocitation methods. The maps and clustering outcomes reveal that a number of journals in allied areas of the information science and library science category may not be very closely related to each other or may not be appropriately situated in the category studied. The citing discipline similarity data resulted in similar outcomes with the cocitation data but with some notable differences. Because the citing discipline method relies on a citing perspective different from cocitations, it may provide a complementary way to compare journal similarity that is less labor intensive than cocitation analysis.
citation analysis co-citation analysis