We provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.

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Erasmus Research Institute of Management
hdl.handle.net/1765/10889
ERIM Report Series Research in Management
ERIM report series research in management Erasmus Research Institute of Management
Erasmus Research Institute of Management

van Eck, N. J., & Waltman, L. (2007). Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis (No. ERS-2007-091-LIS). ERIM report series research in management Erasmus Research Institute of Management. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/1765/10889