Measuring internationality without bias against the periphery

This paper explores the degree of internationality in the context of academic publishing. Therefore, an Internationality indicator based on the Gini-Simpson-Index was created. It captures not only the composition of countries authoring but also the countries citing a journal. The indicator is applied to study the internationality score of center and peripheral countries among six research fields. Unlike previous indicators measuring internationality, the indicator proposed in this paper is not biased towards peripheral countries. Our results show that internationality is not uniform and some areas like natural sciences are more international than other areas. This contribution demonstrates that the Internationality indicator proposed iS not biased against peripheral countries, so that the true internationality of publications from these countries is captured. (Author)