Although some literature's findings are more important than others, but they are less cited. Is it because of the rank of the journal? or due to other reasons? what are they?
Orlando M Lourenço said it all.
Some researchers label people without knowing them. And prejudice does exist.
Furthermore, fair play seems to be a dated concept...
Regards.
Dear M. Awad,
There are many reasons why some literature is more cited that another one. Here they go some reasons I think have an effect on the seriuos issue you raise. Their order is not operative:
(1) The rank of the Journal or its index impact factor. A paper pubished in Science or Nature is generally more cited than another one published in a less prestigious Journal.
(2) The relevance and importance of findings, even though this is not always the case for the following reasons:
(3) The mainstream, that is, what is fancy or dominant at a certain time. Although this is a reality mainly in social and human sciences, theories about human nature never really die for they just go in and out fashion.
(4) Inbreeding, which is a sad, albeit frequent reality. If, for example, you rightly criticize a dominant paradigm or approcach, it is almost sure that proponents and supporters of such a paradigm do not cite your work. What they like to cite are those researches that confirm the focal theory, model or approach. Another form of inbreeding is just to cite papers of your "friends" or those who agree with our ideas and even belong to your country. This often happens in the USA.
(5) Last but not the least there is much envy and jealousy, even in the scientific field. Because of this, some of your peers and "friends" may decide to ignore you just because they were not able or did not want to do what you have done in terms of research.
This list could be longer, but I think it touchs upon the gist of your question.
Best regards,
Orlando
I fully agree with Orlando's answer but I would add that there are also very strong national circles. Some British colleagues do not cite publications in highly ranked American journals because they apparently have difficulties "knowing that they exist". This obviously excludes linguistic problems. In Europe you will find French circles, German circles, British circles etc. This supports the concept of citing one's "friends" but "within ones own country" or "linguistic groups" e.g. French researchers will focus on French Canada and not Scandinavia. On top of that very little effort is made in trying to read articles in different languages.
Dear Carmen:
Don't you think that what you call "national circles" are a typical case on inbreeding? Of course, I strongly agree with you that very little effort is made in trying to read articles in different languages. It seems that USA reseachers think that they are the owners of the world.
All the best,
Orlando
I agree with my colleagues that citing articles is based on national circles. I started to experience it when I review articles for some journals. I noticed that even the far east researchers are citing their colleagues and nationals instead of citing western researchers or other researchers in general. I guess the only solution to this is to encourage authors during the review process to add citations to other literature which are outside their circles.
Citing of articles depends on the content, novelty of the research, presentation style, as well as the journal chosen to publish the article. A good article will definitely get cited, even if it takes time.
Orlando M Lourenço said it all.
Some researchers label people without knowing them. And prejudice does exist.
Furthermore, fair play seems to be a dated concept...
Regards.
Although there are exceptions, inbreeding is often the reason why some papers are more cited than other ones. I know of this as a reviewer and an author. The so called blind review peer-system is not so blind as the maintrean and the status quo wants make us to think
Certainly the more the level of the magazine is very high the number of citations is very high and the more the name of the author is widely known the number of citations is very large and the higher the supporters the higher level the number of citations and the more excellent the work the number of citations
Prof Orlando M Lourenço does this include self-citation or same institution citation? Thank you for your contribution
Certainly Dr, Shakir Tuleab the journal standard plays an important role and the topic too. I..e if a new concept concerning a specific discipline it will be more cited such in image processing edge detection techniques or in climate Penman Monteith equations.
Keywords and brief but informative titles/abstracts play a major role in finding and citing articles more than the others. Journal impact factor and easy access to articles are also other factors that affect citing literature.
Informative and well-written abstracts, high impact journals, and easy access to articles are all factors that lead to more citing of the literature.
Because of the excellence of their writings; Prusiner, Nobel Prize, is such a great example of great scientific writing and his article was downloaded 1 million times and is cited 1436 times in Us National Library of Medicine. Article Prions
Citation is more for those papers related to current issues/latest/advanced techniques and with some burning issues/scarcity
Thank you Hassan Izzeddin Sarsak , Fred Romano , Orlando M Lourenço and Mahavir Balmukund Varma for your contribution.
Other things that can help in increasing citations is the discipline itself if it is medical discipline it would have higher chance to be searched and referenced than less known discipline.
Maybe:
They are published in reputable journals.
They contain general/ common interest at the moment.
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