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112 Becoming Metric-Wise

Figure 5.2 The ego (E), the Ego’s citation identity, the Ego’s citation image and the
Ego’s citation image makers.

ego’s citation identity tend to begin with the ego himself. It further con-
sists of those colleagues that are cited often- are recited - and ends with a
long list of unicitations (authors that are cited exactly once by the ego).
Clearly, the study of author recitations connects to the study of author
citation networks. Such networks can be considered as a special type of
social networks (see Chapter 10: Networks). The intersection between
the image and the identity set consists of self-citations, actually author
self-citations, see Subsection 5.6.2.
From these examples (and using common sense) one can easily
describe an author’s citation identity. For a theoretical informetrician it
may consist of:
• Oneself.
• One’s team (students, research group).
• One’s formal organization (department).
• One’s invisible college.