title: The citation merit of scientific publications.
abstract: We propose a new method to assess the merit of any set of scientific papers in a given field based on the citations they receive. Given a field and a citation impact indicator, such as the mean citation or the [Formula: see text]-index, the merit of a given set of [Formula: see text] articles is identified with the probability that a randomly drawn set of [Formula: see text] articles from a given pool of articles in that field has a lower citation impact according to the indicator in question. The method allows for comparisons between sets of articles of different sizes and fields. Using a dataset acquired from Thomson Scientific that contains the articles published in the periodical literature in the period 1998-2007, we show that the novel approach yields rankings of research units different from those obtained by a direct application of the mean citation or the [Formula: see text]-index.
authors.affiliation: Departamento de Economía Cuantitativa, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Madrid, Spain. juan.crespo@uam.es
authors.forename: Juan A
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Crespo
authors.forename: Ignacio
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Ortuño-Ortín
authors.forename: Javier
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Ruiz-Castillo
mesh_terms: D015706:Bibliometrics; D015510:Clinical Medicine; D004467:Economics; D007753:Laboratories; D009488:Neurosciences; D017712:Peer Review, Research / Q000592:standards*; D010825:Physics; D012586:Science; D014495:Universities