IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/ecinqu/v58y2020i3p1233-1244.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Citations And Incentives In Academic Contests

Author

Listed:
  • J. Atsu Amegashie

Abstract

I consider a contest between scholars on the basis of three popular indices of citation. There exist equilibria in which there are more and better‐quality papers in the total citations contest than in the h‐index contest. In some cases, the total citations contest yields the same quality of papers but more papers than the Euclidean contest. As the cost of writing a paper increases,the h‐index is inferior to the total citations index in both the quality and quantity of papers. This result is partly driven by how the number of papers constrains how the h‐index counts citations. (JEL D72)

Suggested Citation

  • J. Atsu Amegashie, 2020. "Citations And Incentives In Academic Contests," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 58(3), pages 1233-1244, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:ecinqu:v:58:y:2020:i:3:p:1233-1244
    DOI: 10.1111/ecin.12860
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/ecin.12860
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/ecin.12860?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
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Glenn Ellison, 2013. "How Does the Market Use Citation Data? The Hirsch Index in Economics," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 5(3), pages 63-90, July.
    2. Esteban, Joan & Ray, Debraj, 2001. "Collective Action and the Group Size Paradox," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 95(3), pages 663-672, September.
    3. Roberto Serrano, 2004. "The Measurement of Intellectual Influence: the Views of a Sceptic," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 1(3), pages 1-6.
    4. James J. Heckman & Sidharth Moktan, 2020. "Publishing and Promotion in Economics: The Tyranny of the Top Five," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 58(2), pages 419-470, June.
    5. John P. Conley & Mario J. Crucini & Robert A. Driskill & Ali Sina Önder, 2013. "The Effects Of Publication Lags On Life-Cycle Research Productivity In Economics," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 51(2), pages 1251-1276, April.
    6. Gil S. Epstein & Carsten Hefeker, 2003. "Lobbying contests with alternative instruments," Economics of Governance, Springer, vol. 4(1), pages 81-89, April.
    7. Maria Arbatskaya & Hugo Mialon, 2010. "Multi-activity contests," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 43(1), pages 23-43, April.
    8. Matthias Köppe & Christopher Thomas Ryan & Maurice Queyranne, 2011. "Rational Generating Functions and Integer Programming Games," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 59(6), pages 1445-1460, December.
    9. Ludo Waltman & Nees Jan van Eck, 2012. "The inconsistency of the h-index," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 63(2), pages 406-415, February.
    10. Chambers, Christopher P. & Miller, Alan D., 2014. "Scholarly influence," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 151(C), pages 571-583.
    11. Motty Perry & Philip J. Reny, 2016. "How to Count Citations If You Must," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 106(9), pages 2722-2741, September.
    12. Daniel S. Hamermesh, 2018. "Citations in Economics: Measurement, Uses, and Impacts," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 56(1), pages 115-156, March.
    13. Ignacio Palacios-Huerta & Oscar Volij, 2004. "The Measurement of Intellectual Influence," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 72(3), pages 963-977, May.
    14. Arthur E. Attema & Werner B.F. Brouwer & Job Van Exel, 2014. "Your Right Arm For A Publication In Aer?," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 52(1), pages 495-502, January.
    15. Baik, Kyung Hwan, 1993. "Effort levels in contests : The public-good prize case," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 41(4), pages 363-367.
    16. Nitzan, Shmuel & Ueda, Kaoru, 2009. "Collective contests for commons and club goods," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 93(1-2), pages 48-55, February.
    17. Kalaitzidakis, P. & Mamuneas, T.P. & Stengos, T., 2003. "Rankings of Academic Journals and Institutions," Working Papers 2003-8, University of Guelph, Department of Economics and Finance.
    18. Palacios-Huerta, Ignacio & Volij, Oscar, 2014. "Axiomatic measures of intellectual influence," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 34(C), pages 85-90.
    19. Benjamin M. Althouse & Jevin D. West & Carl T. Bergstrom & Theodore Bergstrom, 2009. "Differences in impact factor across fields and over time," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 60(1), pages 27-34, January.
    20. Amegashie, J. Atsu, 2019. "Quantity-cum-quality contests," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 289-297.
    21. Andrew J. Oswald, 2007. "An Examination of the Reliability of Prestigious Scholarly Journals: Evidence and Implications for Decision‐Makers," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 74(293), pages 21-31, February.
    22. Amegashie, J Atsu, 2002. "Committees and Rent-Seeking Effort under Probabilistic Voting," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 112(3-4), pages 345-350, September.
    23. William H. Starbuck, 2005. "How Much Better Are the Most-Prestigious Journals? The Statistics of Academic Publication," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 16(2), pages 180-200, April.
    24. Howard Bodenhorn, 2003. "Economic Scholarship at Elite Liberal Arts Colleges: A Citation Analysis with Rankings," The Journal of Economic Education, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 34(4), pages 341-359, December.
    25. David I. Stern, 2013. "Uncertainty Measures for Economics Journal Impact Factors," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 51(1), pages 173-189, March.
    26. Andersen, Jens Peter, 2017. "An empirical and theoretical critique of the Euclidean index," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 11(2), pages 455-465.
    27. Thierry Marchant, 2009. "An axiomatic characterization of the ranking based on the h-index and some other bibliometric rankings of authors," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 80(2), pages 325-342, August.
    28. Pantelis Kalaitzidakis & Theofanis P. Mamuneas & Thanasis Stengos, 2003. "Rankings of Academic Journals and Institutions in Economics," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 1(6), pages 1346-1366, December.
    29. Nitzan, Shmuel, 1991. "Collective Rent Dissipation," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 101(409), pages 1522-1534, November.
    30. Woeginger, Gerhard J., 2008. "An axiomatic characterization of the Hirsch-index," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 56(2), pages 224-232, September.
    31. Daniel S. Hamermesh & Gerard A. Pfann, 2012. "Reputation And Earnings: The Roles Of Quality And Quantity In Academe," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 50(1), pages 1-16, January.
    32. Sune Lehmann & Andrew D. Jackson & Benny E. Lautrup, 2006. "Measures for measures," Nature, Nature, vol. 444(7122), pages 1003-1004, December.
    33. Kostas Axarloglou & Vasilis Theoharakis, 2003. "Diversity in Economics: An Analysis of Journal Quality Perceptions," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 1(6), pages 1402-1423, December.
    34. Moore, William J & Newman, Robert J & Turnbull, Geoffrey K, 2001. "Reputational Capital and Academic Pay," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 39(4), pages 663-671, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Daniel S. Hamermesh, 2018. "Citations in Economics: Measurement, Uses, and Impacts," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 56(1), pages 115-156, March.
    2. Johannes König & David I. Stern & Richard S.J. Tol, 2022. "Confidence Intervals for Recursive Journal Impact Factors," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 22-038/III, Tinbergen Institute.
    3. Haley, M. Ryan & McGee, M. Kevin, 2020. "Jointly valuing journal visibility and author citation count: An axiomatic approach," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 14(1).
    4. David L. Anderson & John Tressler, 2013. "The Relevance of the “h-” and “g-” Index to Economics in the Context of A Nation-Wide Research Evaluation Scheme: The New Zealand Case," Economic Papers, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 32(1), pages 81-94, March.
    5. Csató, László, 2019. "Journal ranking should depend on the level of aggregation," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 13(4).
    6. Erich Battistin & Marco Ovidi, 2022. "Rising Stars: Expert Reviews and Reputational Yardsticks in the Research Excellence Framework," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 89(356), pages 830-848, October.
    7. Kim‐Sau Chung & Meng‐Yu Liang & Melody Lo, 2022. "On the information contents of indirect citations," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 55(1), pages 156-173, February.
    8. Joseph Gerald Hirschberg & Jeanette Ngaire Lye, 2020. "Grading Journals In Economics: The Abcs Of The Abdc," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 34(4), pages 876-921, September.
    9. Flores-Szwagrzak, Karol & Treibich, Rafael, 2015. "Co-authorship and the Measurement of Individual Productivity," Discussion Papers on Economics 17/2015, University of Southern Denmark, Department of Economics.
    10. María Victoria Anauati & Sebastian Galiani & Ramiro H. Gálvez, 2020. "Differences In Citation Patterns Across Journal Tiers: The Case Of Economics," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 58(3), pages 1217-1232, July.
    11. Conan Mukherjee & Ranojoy Basu & Aftab Alam, 2020. "A measure of authorship by publications," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 41(3), pages 354-361, April.
    12. L'aszl'o Csat'o, 2019. "Journal ranking should depend on the level of aggregation," Papers 1904.06300, arXiv.org, revised Sep 2019.
    13. David I. Stern & Richard S. J. Tol, 2021. "Depth and breadth relevance in citation metrics," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 59(3), pages 961-977, July.
    14. Lutz Bornmann & Alexander Butz & Klaus Wohlrabe, 2018. "What are the top five journals in economics? A new meta-ranking," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 50(6), pages 659-675, February.
    15. Jan Ours & Frederic Vermeulen, 2007. "Ranking Dutch Economists," De Economist, Springer, vol. 155(4), pages 469-487, December.
    16. Osório, António (António Miguel), 2018. "Group contest success function: The heterogeneous individuals case," Working Papers 2072/332583, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Department of Economics.
    17. John Gibson & David L. Anderson & John Tressler, 2014. "Which Journal Rankings Best Explain Academic Salaries? Evidence From The University Of California," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 52(4), pages 1322-1340, October.
    18. Carlo D'Ippoliti, 2021. "“Many‐Citedness”: Citations Measure More Than Just Scientific Quality," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 35(5), pages 1271-1301, December.
    19. Karol Flores-Szwagrzak & Rafael Treibich, 2020. "Teamwork and Individual Productivity," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 66(6), pages 2523-2544, June.
    20. Antonin Macé, 2023. "The Limits of Citation Counts," Working Papers halshs-01630095, HAL.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:bla:ecinqu:v:58:y:2020:i:3:p:1233-1244. 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: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/weaaaea.html .

    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.