Frozen Footprints

"Citations are frozen footprints in the landscape of scholarly achievement which bear witness of the passage of ideas" - Blaise Cronin

Bibliometrics, also known as scientometrics, is the quantitative study of the process of scholarly publication of research achievements. The complex system of scholarly publication reveals different types of networks, mainly citation networks (where links represent bibliographic references) and collaboration networks (in which links correspond to article co-authorships). These networks are analysed in order to capture meaningful properties of the underlying research system, and in particular to determine the influence of bibliometric units like scholars and journals. Read more...

Science and social science citation network (generated with Mapequation.org; high resolution)

Collaboration network on the field of network science (generated with Mapequation.org; high resolution)

Pointers

• Eigenfactor - Ranking and mapping scientific journals
• Scimago Journal & Country Rank
• THE-QS World University Rankings
• Shanghai Academic Ranking of World Universities
• The first Italian research assessment exercise (VTR 2001-2003)
• The second Italian research assessment exercise (VQR 2004-2008)

"If scientometrics is a mirror of science in action, then scientometricians' particular responsibility is to both polish the mirror and warn against optical illusions" - Michel Zitt