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Article
Big Macs and Eigenfactor Scores: Don't Let the Correlation Coefficients Fool You
Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology (2010)
  • Jevin D West, University of Washington
  • Carl T Bergstrom, University of Washington
  • Theodore C Bergstrom
Abstract

A recent article by Phil Davis suggested that the Eigenvalue metric does adds little useful information to the more simply calculated measure of total citations published by the ISI. This paper argues that Davis's claim is an instance of a classic statistical fallacy of spurious correlation. Based on an analysis of the entire 2006 ISI Journal Citation Reports, we show that there are statistically and economically significant differences between the Eigenfactor metrics and the ISI's impact factor and total citations.

Keywords
  • impact factor,
  • eigenfactor,
  • spurious correlation,
  • statistics
Publication Date
April 13, 2010
Citation Information
Jevin D West, Carl T Bergstrom and Theodore C Bergstrom. "Big Macs and Eigenfactor Scores: Don't Let the Correlation Coefficients Fool You" Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology Vol. to appear (2010)
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/ted_bergstrom/108/