IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/scient/v109y2016i3d10.1007_s11192-016-2140-x.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The scholarly communication of economic knowledge: a citation analysis of Google Scholar

Author

Listed:
  • Yutao Sun

    (Northeast Normal University)

  • Belle Selene Xia

    (University of Helsinki)

Abstract

Citation counts can be used as a proxy to study the scholarly communication of knowledge and the impact of research in academia. Previous research has addressed several important factors of citation counts. In this study, we aim to investigate whether there exist quantitative patterns behind citations, and thus provide a detailed analysis of the factors behind successful research. The study involves conducting quantitative analyses on how various features, such as the author’s quality, the journal’s impact factor, and the publishing year, of a published scientific article affect the number of citations. We carried out full-text searches in Google Scholar to obtain our data set on citation counts. The data set is then set up into panels and used to conduct the proposed analyses by employing a negative binomial regression. Our results show that attributes such as the author’s quality and the journal’s impact factor do have important contributions to its citations. In addition, an article’s citation count does not only depend on its own properties as mentioned above but also depends on the quality, as measured by the number of citations, of its cited articles. That is, the number of citations of a paper seems to be affected by the number of citations of articles that the particular paper cites. This study provides statistical characteristics of how different features of an article affect the number of citations. In addition, it provides statistical evidence that the number of citations of a scientific article depends on the number of citations of the articles it cites.

Suggested Citation

  • Yutao Sun & Belle Selene Xia, 2016. "The scholarly communication of economic knowledge: a citation analysis of Google Scholar," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 109(3), pages 1965-1978, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:scient:v:109:y:2016:i:3:d:10.1007_s11192-016-2140-x
    DOI: 10.1007/s11192-016-2140-x
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11192-016-2140-x
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11192-016-2140-x?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Cameron,A. Colin & Trivedi,Pravin K., 2013. "Regression Analysis of Count Data," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9781107667273.
    2. Hausman, Jerry, 2015. "Specification tests in econometrics," Applied Econometrics, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA), vol. 38(2), pages 112-134.
    3. Adam Jaffe & Manuel Trajtenberg, 1999. "International Knowledge Flows: Evidence From Patent Citations," Economics of Innovation and New Technology, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 8(1-2), pages 105-136.
    4. Gary Chamberlain, 1980. "Analysis of Covariance with Qualitative Data," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 47(1), pages 225-238.
    5. Liwen Vaughan & Debora Shaw, 2003. "Bibliographic and Web citations: What is the difference?," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 54(14), pages 1313-1322, December.
    6. Kayvan Kousha & Mike Thelwall, 2008. "Sources of Google Scholar citations outside the Science Citation Index: A comparison between four science disciplines," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 74(2), pages 273-294, February.
    7. John Mingers & Evangelia A. E. C. G. Lipitakis, 2010. "Counting the citations: a comparison of Web of Science and Google Scholar in the field of business and management," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 85(2), pages 613-625, November.
    8. Michael H. MacRoberts & Barbara R. MacRoberts, 1989. "Problems of citation analysis: A critical review," Journal of the American Society for Information Science, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 40(5), pages 342-349, September.
    9. Schreiber Sven, 2008. "The Hausman Test Statistic can be Negative even Asymptotically," Journal of Economics and Statistics (Jahrbuecher fuer Nationaloekonomie und Statistik), De Gruyter, vol. 228(4), pages 394-405, August.
    10. Lancaster, Tony, 2000. "The incidental parameter problem since 1948," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 95(2), pages 391-413, April.
    11. Kayvan Kousha & Mike Thelwall, 2007. "Google Scholar citations and Google Web/URL citations: A multi‐discipline exploratory analysis," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 58(7), pages 1055-1065, May.
    12. William H. Greene, 1994. "Accounting for Excess Zeros and Sample Selection in Poisson and Negative Binomial Regression Models," Working Papers 94-10, New York University, Leonard N. Stern School of Business, Department of Economics.
    13. George A. Barnett & Catherine Huh & Youngju Kim & Han Woo Park, 2011. "Citations among communication journals and other disciplines: a network analysis," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 88(2), pages 449-469, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Cristina López-Duarte & Marta M. Vidal-Suárez & Belén González-Díaz, 2019. "Cross-national distance and international business: an analysis of the most influential recent models," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 121(1), pages 173-208, October.
    2. Boris Forthmann & Philipp Doebler, 2021. "Reliability of researcher capacity estimates and count data dispersion: a comparison of Poisson, negative binomial, and Conway-Maxwell-Poisson models," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(4), pages 3337-3354, April.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Martín-Martín, Alberto & Orduna-Malea, Enrique & Thelwall, Mike & Delgado López-Cózar, Emilio, 2018. "Google Scholar, Web of Science, and Scopus: A systematic comparison of citations in 252 subject categories," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 12(4), pages 1160-1177.
    2. Seonho Shin, 2021. "Were they a shock or an opportunity?: The heterogeneous impacts of the 9/11 attacks on refugees as job seekers—a nonlinear multi-level approach," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 61(5), pages 2827-2864, November.
    3. Anders Skrondal & Sophia Rabe-Hesketh, 2022. "The Role of Conditional Likelihoods in Latent Variable Modeling," Psychometrika, Springer;The Psychometric Society, vol. 87(3), pages 799-834, September.
    4. Victor Aguirregabiria & Jesus Carro, 2021. "Identification of Average Marginal Effects in Fixed Effects Dynamic Discrete Choice Models," Working Papers tecipa-701, University of Toronto, Department of Economics.
    5. William H. Greene & David A. Hensher, 2008. "Modeling Ordered Choices: A Primer and Recent Developments," Working Papers 08-26, New York University, Leonard N. Stern School of Business, Department of Economics.
    6. Luigi Aldieri & Concetto Paolo Vinci, 2016. "Technological Spillovers Through A Patent Citation Analysis," International Journal of Innovation Management (ijim), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 20(02), pages 1-23, February.
    7. Lippi Bruni, Matteo & Mammi, Irene & Ugolini, Cristina, 2016. "Does the extension of primary care practice opening hours reduce the use of emergency services?," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 144-155.
    8. Hany Eldemerdash & Hugh Metcalf & Sara Maioli, 2014. "Twin deficits: new evidence from a developing (oil vs. non-oil) countries’ perspective," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 47(3), pages 825-851, November.
    9. Trottmann, Maria & Zweifel, Peter & Beck, Konstantin, 2012. "Supply-side and demand-side cost sharing in deregulated social health insurance: Which is more effective?," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(1), pages 231-242.
    10. Marine de Talance, 2017. "Quality Perceptions and School Choice in Rural Pakistan," Working Papers hal-01663029, HAL.
    11. Krishna Chaitanya Vadlamannati & Yuanxin Li & Samuel Brazys & Alexander Dukalskis, 2019. "Building Bridges or Breaking Bonds? The Belt and Road Initiative and Foreign Aid Competition," Working Papers 201906, Geary Institute, University College Dublin.
    12. Manuel Arellano & Stéphane Bonhomme, 2009. "Robust Priors in Nonlinear Panel Data Models," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 77(2), pages 489-536, March.
    13. Greene, William, 2007. "Functional Form and Heterogeneity in Models for Count Data," Foundations and Trends(R) in Econometrics, now publishers, vol. 1(2), pages 113-218, August.
    14. Jia, Lili, 2012. "Land fragmentation and off-farm labor supply in China," Studies on the Agricultural and Food Sector in Transition Economies, Leibniz Institute of Agricultural Development in Transition Economies (IAMO), volume 66, number 66.
    15. Martin Gassebner & Richard Jong‐A‐Pin & Jochen O. Mierau, 2011. "Terrorism And Cabinet Duration," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 52(4), pages 1253-1270, November.
    16. Geert Dhaene & Koen Jochmans, 2015. "Split-panel Jackknife Estimation of Fixed-effect Models," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 82(3), pages 991-1030.
    17. Cheng Hsiao, 2007. "Panel data analysis—advantages and challenges," TEST: An Official Journal of the Spanish Society of Statistics and Operations Research, Springer;Sociedad de Estadística e Investigación Operativa, vol. 16(1), pages 1-22, May.
    18. Caroline Krafft, 2020. "Why is fertility on the rise in Egypt? The role of women’s employment opportunities," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 33(4), pages 1173-1218, October.
    19. Lionel WILNER, 2019. "The Dynamics of Individual Happiness," Working Papers 2019-18, Center for Research in Economics and Statistics.
    20. Vigren, Andreas, 2020. "The Distance Factor in Swedish Bus Contracts How far are operators willing to go?," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 132(C), pages 188-204.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:scient:v:109:y:2016:i:3:d:10.1007_s11192-016-2140-x. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.