How to evaluate universities in terms of their relative citation impacts: Fractional counting of citations and the normalization of differences among disciplines

Abstract: Fractional counting of citations can improve on ranking of multi-disciplinary research units (such as universities) by normalizing the differences among fields of science in terms of differences in citation behavior. Furthermore, normalization in terms of citing papers abolishes the unsolved questions in scientometrics about the delineation of fields of science in terms of journals and normalization when comparing among different journals. Using publication and citation data of seven Korean research universities, we demonstrate the advantages and the differences in the rankings, explain the possible statistics, and suggest ways to visualize the differences in (citing) audiences in terms of a network.