Page 247 - Becoming Metric Wise

238 Becoming Metric-Wise

usually does—increase. This implies that the denominator of the indica-
tors CC(A) and RC(A) may increase. A software program to calculate
these indices is described in (Rousseau & Rousseau, 2014) and is available
at http://crindex.com.

7.12.2 Diffusion

Instead of different citing articles (usually referred to as number of cita-
tions), one may count different citing authors, different citing journals,
different citing institutions, countries, WoS categories, and similar enti-
ties. Doing this, rankings, now based, e.g., on different WoS categories,
and the resulting indices connect the approach presented in this section
to diffusion theory (Liu & Rousseau, 2010; Liu et al., 2012) and the study
of interdisciplinarity (Rafols & Meyer, 2010; Rousseau et al., 2018), as
determined by references coming from different origins.
It is easy to see how this is done in the case of a diffusion outgrow or
C-R index. One considers all elements in ER(A) and determines for
each article in this set the number of different authors citing it, the num-
ber of different countries these authors belong to, the number of different
journals, or, more generally, sources, in which citations occur and the
WoS categories to which these sources belong.
In the case of the RR- index one again considers all elements in ER
(A) and determines for each article the number of different cited authors,
different cited sources and so on. For the CC index one considers the set
EC(A). For each of these elements one considers the number of different
authors citing it, the number of different countries these authors come
from (based on their institutional address or, maybe, their ethnicity), the
number of different sources citing this document and so on. Finally, an
RC diffusion index is determined by considering the set EC(A) and for
each of its elements the number of different cited authors, sources, coun-
tries and so on.

7.13 SO’S OPENNESS AND AFFINITY INDICES (SO, 1990)
7.13.1 Openness Indices
A publication window is given. Then four indices for journal J in year
Y are defined. These indicators are derived from three partial indicators
A, B, and C. Publications are always taken from the given publication