B - Should we use the mean citations per paper to summarise a journal’s impact?

Calver MC,Bradley JS. Should we use the mean citations per paper to summarise a journal’s impact or to rank journals in the same field? Scientometrics. 2009(81)3: 611-615
DOI: 10.1007/s11192-008-2229-y

As criticism of the Journal Impact Factor as a standard for ranking journals
increases, other measures including the mean citations per paper have been proposed
or used. Mean citations per paper can be calculated easily from data in many data bases, removing dependence from the limited list of journals covered in Thomson Reuters’ ISI Web of Science and Journal Citation Reports.The Authors of this paper, however, suggest that it has limitations given the highly skewed distributions of citations per paper in a wide range of journals.

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