Effects of Homophily on Citation Patterns in Scientific Communities
Name
Svetlana Vorotnikova
Abstract
Individuals tend to establish ties in higher rate with individuals that exhibit some kind of affinity than with dissimilar ones. This principle, referred to as homophily, has a important impact in the shape of the social interactions, i.e., topologies of the underlying social networks. In the context of bibliometrics, the effects of homophily can be observed in patterns of citation: references often include a non-negligeable number of self-citations and citations from close collaborators. In light of the above, we aim at designing bibliometric indicators that allow us to modulate the effect of homophily in the ranking induced by metrics. Clearly, homophily-aware metrics would favor communities where citations involve a broader participation. In this thesis, we present homophily-trimmed and homophily-weighted versions of the citation count and report on the patterns of citation
uncovered by such metrics over the citation network for three different communities.
Graduation Thesis language
English
Graduation Thesis type
Master - Information Technology
Supervisor(s)
Luciano García Bañuelos
Defence year
2011