A Study on the Relationship Between the Impact Factor of Academic Journals and the Citation Inequality Index of Published Papers: Focusing on International Journals of Library and Information Science

Although there are journals whose published papers are cited evenly, there may be journals whose impact factors (IF) are distorted by a few popular papers. This study measures the citation inequality in papers published in 44 international journals in the field of library and information science using the Gini Coefficient and analyzes whether there are differences in citation distribution depending on the research areas of Library Science (LS), Information Science (IS), and Scientometrics (SM). Moreover, it explores whether the citation inequality index was related to the journal's IF and whether the IF was distorted by a few popular papers. Analysis revealed that first, the inequality in the number of citations of papers included in library and information science (LIS) journals was found to be g = 0.62. Moreover, if the IF is high, the Gini coefficient is low, therefore the number of citations becomes even (r = -0.367, p < 0.05). Additionally, it was confirmed that equality increased as the non-citation rate decreased. Second, there was a significant difference in the Gini coefficients of papers included in journals in the LS, IS, and SM fields (p < 0.05). The number of citations of papers included in SM journals was the most even (g = 0.5), whereas LS journals had the most uneven citation distribution (g = 0.7). Third, even in LIS journals, we found cases in which journal IF inflation occurred because of a few highly cited papers. This phenomenon has been observed in journals including COVID-19 related topics or bibliometric methodologies that attracted attention.