Citation analysis of the Brazilian tourism journals: subsidies for the estimation of impact factors

This paper presents the analysis of all references made by articles published at the four major Brazilian tourism journals. A total of 28,767 references in the 1,254 articles published since the first volume of each journal until the end of 2014. References were analyzed with respect to their type (journal, book, thesis, conference paper and others), place of publishing (Brazil or other countries) and authorship. For the references of scientific articles, the names of these specific vehicles were identified. The results indicate the most cited authors, books, articles and journals. Impact factors of journals and the h-index of Hirsch (2005) of authors were also estimated. Moreover, techniques of social network analysis were applied to the representation of the relationships between authors and journals, besides estimating complex centrality indexes for these agents. The results also indicate some tendencies of change in the actual scenario arising from the strengthening of new authors and journals.