The number of citations a paper receives depends on mainly four factors.
1. How large is the scientific community of the same field as the paper.
2. The time - relevance of the paper i.e. whether it has immediate or futuristic significance, (some papers get citations immediately and some after decades) and
3. The journal's popularity and it's audience accessibility that has published the paper.
4. Factual usability/citability, i.e whether it can be used to defend a hypothesis in other's papers, while some papers are excellent reading materials but not citable.
Considering these points, many excellent papers will never get the citation they deserves. It is one of the many tools to asses a paper but definitely not a standard. Hence, in my opinion it is better to not judge a paper based on its citations.
The number of citations a paper receives depends on mainly four factors.
1. How large is the scientific community of the same field as the paper.
2. The time - relevance of the paper i.e. whether it has immediate or futuristic significance, (some papers get citations immediately and some after decades) and
3. The journal's popularity and it's audience accessibility that has published the paper.
4. Factual usability/citability, i.e whether it can be used to defend a hypothesis in other's papers, while some papers are excellent reading materials but not citable.
Considering these points, many excellent papers will never get the citation they deserves. It is one of the many tools to asses a paper but definitely not a standard. Hence, in my opinion it is better to not judge a paper based on its citations.
Citations are important, without a doubt but the topic, journal, and timing are even more important in terms of the potential channel to provide future citations to the paper. Moreover, sometimes a paper can be big, without a catchy title, and too technical which prevents the desired level of citations. Hence, the name of the author is also important. Very famous economists, for example, sometimes write a terrible paper but people still cite it to show their awareness about him/her or simply to enhance their own paper's lietarature review, leaving out more relevant papers.
Best
Ibrahim
Thanks for your Answer Biswajit Ghosh and Ibrahim Niftiyev. Both the Ans takes us towards same direction. Citations are important But not Ultimate criteria to judge a Research Paper.
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