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***** To join INSNA, visit http://www.insna.org ***** Indicators of the Interdisciplinarity of Journals: Diversity, Centrality, and Citations Authors: Loet Leydesdorff <http://arxiv.org/find/cs/1/au:+Leydesdorff_L/0/1/0/all/0/1> , Ismael Rafols <http://arxiv.org/find/cs/1/au:+Rafols_I/0/1/0/all/0/1> (Submitted on 18 Mar 2010) Abstract: A citation-based indicator for interdisciplinarity has been missing hitherto among the set of available journal indicators. In this study, we investigate betweenness centrality, entropy, the Gini coefficient, and more recently proposed measures for diversity that combine the statistics of vectors and distances in networks, in terms of their potential to fill this gap. The effects of various normalizations are specified and measured using the matrix of 8,207 journals contained in the Journal Citation Reports of the (Social) Science Citation Index. Betweenness centrality in (1-mode) affiliations networks provides an indicator outperforming betweenness in the (2-mode) citation network. Entropy as a vector-based indicator performs better than the Gini coefficient, but is sensitive to size. Science and Nature, for example, are indicated at the top of the list. The new diversity measure provides reasonable results when (1 - cosine) is assumed as a measure for the distance, but results using Euclidean distances are difficult to interpret. Subjects: Digital Libraries (cs.DL); Physics and Society (physics.soc-ph) Cite as: arXiv:1003.3613v1 <http://arxiv.org/abs/1003.3613v1> [cs.DL] ________________________________ Loet Leydesdorff Amsterdam School of Communications Research (ASCoR) Kloveniersburgwal 48, 1012 CX Amsterdam. Tel. +31-20-525 6598; fax: +31-842239111 [log in to unmask] ; http://www.leydesdorff.net/ _____________________________________________________________________ SOCNET is a service of INSNA, the professional association for social network researchers (http://www.insna.org). To unsubscribe, send an email message to [log in to unmask] containing the line UNSUBSCRIBE SOCNET in the body of the message.