Measuring Citation Diffusion of Selective Indian Physics and Astronomy Journals by Citation Swing Factor (CSF)

The h-index, introduced by Hirsch, is based on the mutual variation between the number of cited and source items. The continuous citation accumulation process over time results in diffusion of cited items from the h-core zone to the adjacent citation-asymmetric h-excess and/or h-tail zones. The indicator Citation Swing Factor (CSF) has recently been developed to measure this diffusion process quantitatively on the basis of h-core citations, excess citations and total citations. CSF is defined as the ratio of change in FHE to change in FET, where FHE (Fractional H-core to Excess citation) indicates the ratio of h-core citations to excess citations and FET (Fractional Excess to Total citation) indicates the ratio of excess citations to total citations. The observed or experimental value of CSF as followed from the basic definition, i.e. the ratio of change in FHE to change in FET over consecutive years, results (-R3/he2) that was obtained on the basis of a theoretical calculation, where R2, h2 and e2 indicate total citations, h-core citations and excess citations respectively. The later expression indicates the expected or theoretical value of CSF. This paper found observed values of CSF for fifteen esteemed Indian physics journals over the last decade (2010-2019) and compared it with the respective theoretical values. The average error over all journals for ten years is found 2.94% indicating close proximity between theoretically expected and practically observed values. Only one journal, viz. Bulletin of the Astronomical Society of India shows large discrepancy between expected and observed values with an average error of 14.3%.