  Ramanujacharyulu's (1964) Power-Weakness Ratio (PWR) measures impact by
recursively multiplying the citation matrix by itself until convergence is
reached in both the cited and citing dimensions; the quotient of these values
is defined as PWR, whereby "cited" is considered as power and "citing" as
weakness. Analytically, PWR is an attractive candidate for measuring journal
impact because of its symmetrical handling of the rows and columns in the
asymmetrical citation matrix, its recursive algorithm, and its mathematical
elegance. In this study, PWR is discussed and critically assessed in relation
to other size-independent recursive metrics. A test using the set of 83
journals in "information and library science" (according to the Web-of-Science
categorization) converged, but did not provide interpretable results. Further
decomposition of this set into homogeneous sub-graphs shows that--like most
other journal indicators--PWR can perhaps be used within homogeneous sets, but
not across citation communities.
