caa a22 4500 445349093 CHVBK 20180317142838.0 cr unu---uuuuu 170323e20110801xx s 000 0 eng 10.1007/s11192-011-0407-9 doi (NATIONALLICENCE)springer-10.1007/s11192-011-0407-9 The skewness of science in 219 sub-fields and a number of aggregates [Elektronische Daten] [Pedro Albarrán, Juan Crespo, Ignacio Ortuño, Javier Ruiz-Castillo] This paper studies evidence from Thomson Scientific (TS) about the citation process of 3.7 million articles published in the period 1998-2002 in 219 Web of Science (WoS) categories, or sub-fields. Reference and citation distributions have very different characteristics across sub-fields. However, when analyzed with the Characteristic Scores and Scales (CSS) technique, which is replication and scale invariant, the shape of these distributions over three broad categories of articles appears strikingly similar. Reference distributions are mildly skewed, but citation distributions with a 5-year citation window are highly skewed: the mean is 20 points above the median, while 9-10% of all articles in the upper tail account for about 44% of all citations. The aggregation of sub-fields into disciplines and fields according to several aggregation schemes preserve this feature of citation distributions. It should be noted that when we look into subsets of articles within the lower and upper tails of citation distributions the universality partially breaks down. On the other hand, for 140 of the 219 sub-fields the existence of a power law cannot be rejected. However, contrary to what is generally believed, at the sub-field level the scaling parameter is above 3.5 most of the time, and power laws are relatively small: on average, they represent 2% of all articles and account for 13.5% of all citations. The results of the aggregation into disciplines and fields reveal that power law algebra is a subtle phenomenon. Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest, Hungary, 2011 Research performance nationallicence Citation analysis nationallicence Power laws nationallicence Characteristic Scores nationallicence Albarrán Pedro Departamento de Fundamentos del Análisis Económico, Universidad de Alicante, Alicante, Spain aut Crespo Juan Departamento de Economía Cuantitativa, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Madrid, Spain aut Ortuño Ignacio Departamento de Economía, Universidad Carlos III, Madrid, Spain aut Ruiz-Castillo Javier Departamento de Economía, Universidad Carlos III & Research Associate of the CEPR Project SCIFI-GLOW, Madrid, Spain aut Scientometrics Springer Netherlands 88/2(2011-08-01), 385-397 0138-9130 88:2<385 2011 88 11192 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-011-0407-9 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI 1 research-article jats NATIONALLICENCE 856 40 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-011-0407-9 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI NATIONALLICENCE 700 1- Albarrán Pedro Departamento de Fundamentos del Análisis Económico, Universidad de Alicante, Alicante, Spain aut NATIONALLICENCE 700 1- Crespo Juan Departamento de Economía Cuantitativa, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Madrid, Spain aut NATIONALLICENCE 700 1- Ortuño Ignacio Departamento de Economía, Universidad Carlos III, Madrid, Spain aut NATIONALLICENCE 700 1- Ruiz-Castillo Javier Departamento de Economía, Universidad Carlos III & Research Associate of the CEPR Project SCIFI-GLOW, Madrid, Spain aut NATIONALLICENCE 773 0- Scientometrics Springer Netherlands 88/2(2011-08-01), 385-397 0138-9130 88:2<385 2011 88 11192 Metadata rights reserved Springer special CC-BY-NC licence nationallicence BK010053 XK010053 XK010000 NATIONALLICENCE NATIONALLICENCE NL-springer