Characteristic scores and scales (CSS) were introduced by Glänzel and Schubert in 1988. CSS can be applied to analyse the citation impact of any subset of a system in comparison with citation patterns of the complete system. In this present study, CSS will be applied to individual subfields as systems and journals and papers as corresponding subunits. CSS are used as parameter-free tools to identify top journals within science fields, to identify highly cited papers within fields and journals and to compare the rank frequency distribution of highly cited papers over journals with the journal ranking according to traditional impact measures. The second part of the study is devoted to the possible normalisation of journal impact. In this study, threshold values of CSS are used to re-scale the journal-impact distributions. The underlying methodology and the outcomes for different subfields representing the life sciences, engineering and mathematics are discussed.
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