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Quantitative and Qualitative Analysis of Editor Behavior through Potentially Coercive Citations

Author

Listed:
  • Claudiu Herteliu

    (Department of Statistics and Econometrics, Bucharest University of Economic Studies, 010552 Bucharest, Romania)

  • Marcel Ausloos

    (School of Business, University of Leicester, LE1 7RH Leicester, UK
    GRAPES—Group of Researchers for Applications of Physics in Economy and Sociology, B-4031 Liege, Belgium)

  • Bogdan Vasile Ileanu

    (Department of Statistics and Econometrics, Bucharest University of Economic Studies, 010552 Bucharest, Romania)

  • Giulia Rotundo

    (Department of Methods and Models for Economics, Territory, and Finance, Sapienza University of Rome, 00162 Rome, Italy)

  • Tudorel Andrei

    (Department of Statistics and Econometrics, Bucharest University of Economic Studies, 010552 Bucharest, Romania)

Abstract

How much is the h -index of an editor of a well-ranked journal improved due to citations which occur after his/her appointment? Scientific recognition within academia is widely measured nowadays by the number of citations or h -index. Our dataset is based on a sample of four editors from a well-ranked journal (impact factor, IF, greater than 2). The target group consists of two editors who seem to benefit by their position through an increased citation number (and subsequently h -index) within the journal. The total amount of citations for the target group is greater than 600. The control group is formed by another set of two editors from the same journal whose relations between their positions and their citation records remain neutral. The total amount of citations for the control group is more than 1200. The timespan for which the citations’ pattern has been studied is 1975–2015. Previous coercive citations for a journal’s benefit (an increase of its IF) has been indicated. To the best of our knowledge, this is a pioneering work on coercive citations for personal (editors’) benefit. Editorial teams should be aware about this type of potentially unethical behavior and act accordingly.

Suggested Citation

  • Claudiu Herteliu & Marcel Ausloos & Bogdan Vasile Ileanu & Giulia Rotundo & Tudorel Andrei, 2017. "Quantitative and Qualitative Analysis of Editor Behavior through Potentially Coercive Citations," Publications, MDPI, vol. 5(2), pages 1-16, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jpubli:v:5:y:2017:i:2:p:15-:d:100179
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Citations

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    Cited by:

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    2. Juan Miguel Campanario, 2018. "Journals that Rise from the Fourth Quartile to the First Quartile in Six Years or Less: Mechanisms of Change and the Role of Journal Self-Citations," Publications, MDPI, vol. 6(4), pages 1-15, November.
    3. Alan Singleton, 2017. "Peer Review and Churchill," Publications, MDPI, vol. 5(2), pages 1-2, June.
    4. Shahryar Sorooshian & Yasaman Parsia, 2018. "Substandard Journal Management: Wastage of Authors’ Motivation," Publications, MDPI, vol. 6(1), pages 1-5, March.
    5. Miguel Navascués & Costantino Budroni, 2019. "Theoretical research without projects," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(3), pages 1-35, March.
    6. Taşkın, Zehra & Doğan, Güleda & Kulczycki, Emanuel & Zuccala, Alesia Ann, 2021. "Self-Citation Patterns of Journals Indexed in the Journal Citation Reports," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 15(4).
    7. Sepideh Fahimifar & Khadijeh Mousavi & Fatemeh Mozaffari & Marcel Ausloos, 2023. "Identification of the most important external features of highly cited scholarly papers through 3 (i.e., Ridge, Lasso, and Boruta) feature selection data mining methods," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 57(4), pages 3685-3712, August.

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