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Approximating total citation counts from first author counts and from total papers

Abstract

This paper is an attempt to improve on the approximation. First author citations (Cf)≈Total citations (Ct) of an author's publications without the work of making the complete citation count under the author and all co-author names.

Using the bibliographies of all faculty from each of four large departments: Physics, Chemistry, Materials Sciences, and Biosciences, in the same university, both first author and complete citation counts were made, care being taken to avoid the most common errors in such counts. It is shown that the function Cf·T/F (where T and F are the total number of papers and F those with subject author's name first) correlates strongly (>90%) with Ct. We find also that Ct correlates strongly with T.

The data also may be used as one more line of evidence to obtain normalizing ratios for possible comparisons of productivityacross different disciplinary universes. A very tentative ratio from different studies would be 8 (Chem.)=4 (Physics)=2.5 (Mat. Sci.)=2 (Mathematics)=4.5 (Biophysics-Biochemistry).

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Roy, R., Roy, N.R. & Johnson, G.G. Approximating total citation counts from first author counts and from total papers. Scientometrics 5, 117–124 (1983). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02072857

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02072857

Keywords

  • Citation Count
  • Common Error
  • Total Citation
  • Author Citation
  • Total Paper