The major problem with science citation indices (e.g. JIF, H) as a tool judging science quality is that they ignore underlying (biology-based) causes of citations. Reasons of citations are often unidentified. Publications might be cited or ignored because of historical, social, competitive or purely scientific reasons. What is your opinion?
Dear Marcel,
The attached article is interesting .
Oppenheim, C., & Renn, S. P. (1978). Highly cited old papers and the reasons why they continue to be cited. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 29(5), 225-231. (cite 113 times in Google scholar)
The article describes a study to ascertain the reasons why certain old papers are still highly cited many years after their publication.
Twenty-three old papers in the subject fields of physics and physical chemistry which are still highly cited were selected, and 978 of the papers that cited them in the period 1974–1975 were studied.
A new typology of reasons for citing the papers was devised, and using this typology, it was found that about 40% of the citations were for historical reasons, but that in the remaining 60% of the cases, the old paper is still begin actively used.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/asi.4630290504/abstract
Dear Marcel,
It depends on the topic and field I deal with. Some papers represent solutions, some stress existing problems. However, most authors try to show a solution but because of human relativity this cannot be the same for others. Frankly spoken, I have not prepared a statistic about it.
Dear Marcel,
The attached article is interesting .
Oppenheim, C., & Renn, S. P. (1978). Highly cited old papers and the reasons why they continue to be cited. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 29(5), 225-231. (cite 113 times in Google scholar)
The article describes a study to ascertain the reasons why certain old papers are still highly cited many years after their publication.
Twenty-three old papers in the subject fields of physics and physical chemistry which are still highly cited were selected, and 978 of the papers that cited them in the period 1974–1975 were studied.
A new typology of reasons for citing the papers was devised, and using this typology, it was found that about 40% of the citations were for historical reasons, but that in the remaining 60% of the cases, the old paper is still begin actively used.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/asi.4630290504/abstract
Dear Marcel,
Citation is, in my view, a charade of historical, social, cultural, and political reasons more or less!
I try to read the papers... and then put them into context with what I'm doing. Old papers that are cited a lot are often at the minimum a touchstone.
But it's not the paper itself that solves, provokes, or maintains a problem; that lies at the feet of whoever invokes the citation and how they interpret it's meaning. It's the responsibility of new authors to put new work in the context of old work. That old work can be poorly done, or well done. It can be prescient in it's conclusions, or turn out to have been an incomplete picture.
Actually, the most-cited papers often either are 1) literature overviews published in high-ranked journals or 2) methodology papers in such journals. Then, there, of course, some 3) ground-breaking studies from which the whole field started developing, but it's not always easy to foresee which paper will get cited a lot in the future (although, in some cases, having a very well-known academic as a co-author will help).
Research is prevalent in all forms as Solutions; Stimulants; Supports
Based on the particular research' suitable and relevant literature provide the guidance.
However, for every research all the three are required so that the researcher will have enough options to do critical examination of the problem or topic.
Example : Research on Water
http://www.unep.org/PDF/Clearing_the_Waters.pdf
In the case of water (or other phenomena), the same central topic might result in totally different reviews addresed to different science communuties perhaps also influencing citation rates. For instance, water could be the central theme of a review paper, but could also be one of the many environmental factors in reviews that deal with other central themes (e.g. meteorology).
Additional remarks/thoughts for discussion:
I think it is not always easy to know exactly why people cite other papers without mind reading. How to identify psychology-based factors, independent from science reasons? Do you think that people want to admit this openly in open-acccess web-sites or polls used for statistical analyses?
Example(s):
- Perhaps people cite others to be cited themselves, and therefore to increase the chance to get a job in science or education?
- Perhaps because of competition or private reasons people refuse or ignore (former) collaborators. Are author names wrongly spelled in publications to reduce citation rates in a competitive framework?
- Are there socially-based collaboration networks to favour publication citations within these networks, independent from science quality?
The following article introduces 33 ways which may help the researchers to improve the number of their citations.
- Sharing detailed research data
- Publish in journal with high impact factor
- Publish across disciplines
- Present a working paper
- Publish your work in a journal with the highest number of abstracting and indexing (
Please read the article for the rest.
Article Effective Strategies for Increasing Citation Frequency
(1) maybe, but would that even work? Would you hire someone because of something so miniscule compared to their accomplishments. Would I want to work for someone so vain? The may never let me be a first author.
(2) doubtful. In "competitive" science you're as likely to cite someone for being wrong. In today's modern databases a misspelled name is unlikely to affect a citation rate.
(3) I have no idea, but it's better not to attribute to malice what is as easily explained by obliviousness.
Partially yes, since a good publication will be cited for its usefulness and not only for other, not always of a rational origin, reasons. I agree that citation is not always a practice that reflects the value, but we cannot diminish all the citation process.
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