Properties of journal impact in relation to bibliometric research group performance indicators

Abstract

In this paper we present a compilation of journal impact properties in relation to other bibliometric indicators as found in our earlier studies together with new results. We argue that journal impact, even calculated in a sufficiently advanced way, becomes important in evaluation practices based on bibliometric analysis only at an aggregate level. In the relation between average journal impact and actual citation impact of groups, the influence of research performance is substantial. Top-performance as well as lower performance groups publish in more or less the same range of journal impact values, but top-performance groups are, on average, more successful in the entire range of journal impact. We find that for the high field citation-density groups a larger size implies a lower average journal impact. For groups in the low field citation-density regions however a larger size implies a considerably higher average journal impact. Finally, we found that top-performance groups have relatively less self-citations than the lower performance groups and this fraction is decreasing with journal impact. © 2012 The Author(s).