Can RANK be Used to Generate a Reliable Author List for Cocitation Studies?

College & Research LibrariesPublished 1 November 1996Open access

Jeff Alger

DOI10.5860/crl_57_06_567

Source URL

Citations11

SJR quartileQ1

SJR score0.83

SNIP1.37

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TL;DR

This study investigates the possibility of using DIALOG's RANK command to generate a list of prominent authors for use in cocitation studies and results indicate that RANK does not effectively retrieve a quality set of prominentAuthors forUse in cocitations studies.

Abstract

This study investigates the possibility of using DIALOG's RANK command to generate a list of prominent authors for use in cocitation studies.The emerging field of biodiversity is used primarily because it represents a new and rapidly expanding field of study.The results indicate that RANK does not effectively retrieve a quality set of prominent authors for use in cocitation studies.Highly cited authors of general texts on biodiversity cause the derived author map to present a misaligned picture of specialization within the field.By limiting citations to only journal articles, a clearer and more accurate picture of the field should emerge.

Keywords

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