An Integrated Impact Indicator (I3)

Allocation of research funding, as well as promotion and tenure decisions, are increasingly made using indicators and impact factors drawn from citations to published work. A debate among scientometricians about proper normalization of citation counts has resolved with the creation of an Integrated Impact Indicator (I3) that solves a number of problems found among previously used indicators. The I3 applies non-parametric statistics using percentiles, allowing highly-cited papers to be weighted more than lesscited ones. It further allows unbundling of venues (i.e., journals or databases) at the article level. Measures at the article level can be re-aggregated in terms of units of evaluation. At the venue level, the I3 creates a properly weighted alternative to the journal impact factor. I3 has the added advantage of enabling and quantifying classifications such as the six percentile rank classes used by the National Science Board’s Science & Engineering Indicators. a John Glenn School of Public Affairs, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43210 USA [email protected]; www.careolineswagner.org b Amsterdam School of Communications Research (ASCoR), Kloveniersburgwal 48, 1012 CX Amsterdam, The Netherlands; [email protected]; http://www.leydesdorff.net.