The convergent validity of several (field-normalized) bibliometric indicators: How well does I3 perform for impact measurement?
Recently, the integrated impact indicator (I3) indicator was introduced where citations are weighted in accordance with the percentile rank class of each publication in a set of publications. I3 can be used as a field-normalized indicator. Field-normalization is common practice in bibliometrics, especially when institutions and countries are compared. Publication and citation practices are so different among fields that citation impact is normalized for cross-field comparisons. In this study, we test the ability of the indicator to discriminate between quality levels of papers as defined by Faculty members at F1000Prime. F1000Prime is a post-publication peer review system for assessing papers in the biomedical area. Thus, we test the convergent validity of I3 (in its size-independent variant) using assessments by peers as baseline and compare its validity with several other (field-normalized) indicators: the mean-normalized citation score (MNCS), relative-citation ratio (RCR), citation score normalized by cited references (CSNCR), characteristic scores and scales (CSS), source-normalized citation score (SNCS), citation percentiles, and proportion of papers which belong to the x x different quality levels. I3 performs similar as (slightly better than) most of the other field-normalized indicators. Thus, the results point out that the indicator could be a valuable alternative to other indicators in bibliometrics.
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