2023 VOLUME 3 ISSUE 2
RESEARCH ARTICLE
Two indicators rule them all: Mean and standard deviation used to calculate other journal indicators based on log-normal distribution of citation counts
AUTHOR
Zhesi Shen, Liying Yang, Jinshan Wu
ABSTRACT
Two journal-level indicators, respectively the mean (mi) and the standard deviation (vi) areproposed to be the core indicators of each journal and we show that quite several other indicators can be calculated from those two core indicators, assuming that yearly citation counts of papers in each journal follow more or less a log-normal distribution. Those other journal-level indicators include journal index, journal one-by-one-sample comparison citation success index Sij, journal multiple-sample Ki-Kj comparison success rate 
, and minimum representative sizes kij and kji , the average ranking of all papers in a journal in a set of journals (Rt). We find thatthose indicators are consistent with those calculated directly using the raw citation data 
of journals. In addition to its theoretical significance, the ability to estimate other indicators from core indicators has practical implications. This feature enables individuals who lack access to raw citation count data to utilize other indicators by simply using core indicators, which are typically easily accessible.
KEYWORDS
Journal impact factor; h-index; Minimum representative size; log-normal distribution; Ranking journals