This paper presents a journal indicator of citation impact of a scientific-scholarly journal. It builds further upon Eugene Garfield's groundbreaking ideas presented in many of his early and later publications, by combining his concept of a journal impact factor with his notion that "evaluation studies using citation data must be very sensitive to all divisions, both subtle and gross, between areas of research; and when they are found, the study must properly compensate for disparities in citation potential (Garfield, 1979, p 249)". The proposed indicator is based on a tailor made delimitation of a journal's subject field, and takes into account the frequency and immediacy of citation and database coverage in a subject field applying the concept of source or citing-side field normalization. The first part of the paper outlines the main features of SNIP. The second part discusses the base ideas of source normalization and proposes research lines aimed to further explore its potentialities in research assessment methodologies.
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