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Abstract
The paper discusses the often lamented lack of a theory of citations, and the lack of a sociological theory in particular. It draws attention to one proposed theory and discusses the potential reasons why it has not been generally accepted as the theory of citations, despite its merits in explaining many phenomena in the citation behaviour of scientists. This theory has been expounded by Latour and presented, in particular, in his book entitledScience in Action.
Abstract
Over the past 30 years, the research behavior of Chinese scholars has continually evolved. This paper studied the citing behavior of Chinese scholars by employing three indicators of citation concentration from the perspective of citation breadth analysis. All the citations from 2,338,033 papers from the Chinese Citation Database (1979–2008) covering four disciplines—Chemistry; Clinical Medicine; Library, Information and Archival Science; and Chinese Literature and World Literature—were analyzed. Empirical results show a general weakening tendency towards citation concentration: (1) decreasing percentage of uncited published papers within a given year; (2) a higher percentage of papers required to account for the same proportion of citation than before; and (3) the steady decline in the Herfindahl-Hirschman index (HHI) of citation distribution. All three measures indicate a decline in citing concentration or an increase in citation breadth. This phenomenon may be the result of increased access to materials, perhaps because of the ease with which scholarly materials can be accessed through the Internet.
Abstract
A new paradigm for comparing quality of published papers across different disciplines has been proposed. This method uses a figure of merit of the ratio of actual citations received to the potential maximum number of citations that could have been received. It is analogous to approaches used to compare performance in physical systems, and appears intrinsically more useful than present approaches.
Abstract
Journal self-citation is one of the crucial bibliometric indicators, which measures the contribution of a journal towards a speciality. Journal self-citation rate is normalised by adapting a two stage refinement. The normalised self-citing rates are compared with external cited rate to know the self and external influence of journals.
Abstract
Citation frequency has been considered a biased surrogate of publication merit. However, previous studies on this subject were based on small sample sizes and were entirely based on null-hypothesis significance testing. Here we evaluated the relative effects of different predictors on citation frequency of ecological articles using an information theory framework designed to evaluate multiple competing hypotheses. Supposed predictors of citation frequency (e.g., number of authors, length of articles) accounted for a low fraction of the total variation. We argue that biases concerning citation are minor in ecology and further studies that attempt to quantify the scientific relevance of an article, aiming to make further relationships with citation, are needed to advance our understanding of why an article is cited.
Abstract
Citation analyses were performed for Australian social science journals to determine the differences between data drawn from Web of Science and Scopus. These data were compared with the tier rankings assigned by disciplinary groups to the journals for the purposes of a new research assessment model, Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA), due to be implemented in 2010. In addition, citation-based indicators including an extended journal impact factor, the h-index, and a modified journal diffusion factor, were calculated to assess whether subsequent analyses influence the ranking of journals. The findings suggest that the Scopus database provides higher number of citations for more of the journals. However, there appears to be very little association between the assigned tier ranking of journals and their rank derived from citations data. The implications for Australian social science researchers are discussed in relation to the use of citation analysis in the ERA.
Abstract
In reference to the increasing significance of citation counting in evaluations of scientists and science institutes as well as in science historiography, it is analyzed empirically what is cited in which frequency and what types of citations in scientific texts are used. Content analyses refer to numbers of references, self-references, publication language of references cited, publication types of references cited, and type of citation within the texts. Validity of citation counting is empirically analyzed with reference to random samples of English and German journal articles as well as German textbooks, encyclopedias, and test-manuals from psychology. Results show that 25% of all citations are perfunctory, more than 50% of references are journal articles and up to 40% are books and book-chapters, 10% are self-references. Differences between publications from various psychological sub-disciplines, publication languages, and types of publication are weak. Thus, validity of evaluative citation counting is limited because at least one quarter refers to perfunctory citations exhibiting a very low information utility level and by the fact that existing citation-databases refer to journal articles only.
Introduction The series of papers (Vanclay 2008a , b , 2009 , 2011 , 2012 ), reporting the opinion, comments and “findings” of the author about Journal citation reports (JCR), the Journal impact factors (JIF) and Web of
Abstract
A significant correlation was found between the mean number of citations to the editors of international chemistry journals and the impact factor of the journals in question. A much weaker correlation was found if citations to the editor(s)-in-chief only were considered; this suggests that the professional profile of the journal is determined by the editorial board rather than the person of the editor(s)-in-chief. The number of citations to the editors of international chemistry journals may be used for characterizing a country's chemical research activity.
Abstract
The classification of citations by their context, previously formulated and used for other studies, is employed here to see if the citation patterns of big and little science are different or not. Theoretical physics articles in 1935 and 1955 are thus compared. No significant differences were found except in the number of references per article which increased significantly from 1935 to 1955, and again to 1968. It is found, however, that the German journal Zeitschrift für Physik has considerably higher percentages of conceptual, organic, and evolutionary citations, both in 1935 and in 1955, than The Physical Review. The interpretation of this difference remains unclear.
