Using the Co-Citation Network to Indicate Article Impact

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Description/Abstract

Scholarly outputs are growing in number and frequency, driving the requirement to research new early indication metrics. Historically, citations have been used as an independent indication of the signi�cance of scholarly material. However, citations are very slow to accrue since they can only be made by subsequently published material. This enforces a delay of a number of years before the citation impact of a publication can be accurately judged. Existing early indication metrics, such as download metrics and web based link analysis, have obtained correlation results. Brody finds a good correlation between download metrics and subsequent impact by citation, while Thelwall fi�nds very little correlation between Google's PageRank and the number of links (or citations) to a web site, suggesting neither is a good surrogate indicator for the other. While valid studies, neither take account of the quality assessment factor of peer-review citation. This work presents an investigation into new metrics which utilize the co-citation network in order to rate a publications impact.