IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/infome/v9y2015i3p419-429.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Does quality and content matter for citedness? A comparison with para-textual factors and over time

Author

Listed:
  • Bornmann, Lutz
  • Leydesdorff, Loet

Abstract

Using (binomial) regression analysis, we run models using citation windows of one to ten years with both annual citation and cumulative citations as dependent variables, and with both bibliometric and quality indicators (judgments of peers) as independent variables. The bibliometric variables are the Journal Impact Factor (JIF) of the publication medium, the numbers of authors and pages, and the statistical citedness of the references used within the paper. We find that the JIF has a larger influence on the citation impact of a publication than the quality (measured by judgments of peers). However, the number of pages and the quality of the references are less influential. The influence of JIF peaks after three years and then declines (in most regression analyses), but remains higher than the influence of quality judgments even after ten years. These results call into question a discrepancy between the algorithmically based indicators and the qualitative judgments by experts. The latter seems less predictive for future citation than a combination of algorithmic constructs. The results of this study can contribute to the empirical specification of the relevance of a normative versus a constructivist theory of citation.

Suggested Citation

  • Bornmann, Lutz & Leydesdorff, Loet, 2015. "Does quality and content matter for citedness? A comparison with para-textual factors and over time," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 9(3), pages 419-429.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:infome:v:9:y:2015:i:3:p:419-429
    DOI: 10.1016/j.joi.2015.03.001
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1751157715000425
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.joi.2015.03.001?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. Bornmann, Lutz & Leydesdorff, Loet & Wang, Jian, 2014. "How to improve the prediction based on citation impact percentiles for years shortly after the publication date?," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 8(1), pages 175-180.
    2. Martin, Ben R. & Irvine, John, 1993. "Assessing basic research : Some partial indicators of scientific progress in radio astronomy," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 22(2), pages 106-106, April.
    3. Hausman, Jerry & Hall, Bronwyn H & Griliches, Zvi, 1984. "Econometric Models for Count Data with an Application to the Patents-R&D Relationship," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 52(4), pages 909-938, July.
    4. Bornmann, Lutz & Williams, Richard, 2013. "How to calculate the practical significance of citation impact differences? An empirical example from evaluative institutional bibliometrics using adjusted predictions and marginal effects," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 7(2), pages 562-574.
    5. Waltman, Ludo & van Eck, Nees Jan & van Leeuwen, Thed N. & Visser, Martijn S. & van Raan, Anthony F.J., 2011. "Towards a new crown indicator: Some theoretical considerations," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 5(1), pages 37-47.
    6. Werner Marx & Lutz Bornmann, 2015. "On the causes of subject-specific citation rates in Web of Science," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 102(2), pages 1823-1827, February.
    7. Colin Macilwain, 2013. "Halt the avalanche of performance metrics," Nature, Nature, vol. 500(7462), pages 255-255, August.
    8. Lutz Bornmann, 2015. "Interrater reliability and convergent validity of F1000Prime peer review," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 66(12), pages 2415-2426, December.
    9. Fereshteh Didegah & Mike Thelwall, 2013. "Determinants of research citation impact in nanoscience and nanotechnology," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 64(5), pages 1055-1064, May.
    10. Bornmann, Lutz & Marx, Werner, 2015. "Methods for the generation of normalized citation impact scores in bibliometrics: Which method best reflects the judgements of experts?," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 9(2), pages 408-418.
    11. Norman Kaplan, 1965. "The norms of citation behavior: Prolegomena to the footnote," American Documentation, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 16(3), pages 179-184, July.
    12. Fereshteh Didegah & Mike Thelwall, 2013. "Determinants of research citation impact in nanoscience and nanotechnology," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 64(5), pages 1055-1064, May.
    13. Bornmann, Lutz, 2014. "Validity of altmetrics data for measuring societal impact: A study using data from Altmetric and F1000Prime," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 8(4), pages 935-950.
    14. Thelwall, Mike & Wilson, Paul, 2014. "Regression for citation data: An evaluation of different methods," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 8(4), pages 963-971.
    15. Ludo Waltman & Rodrigo Costas, 2014. "F1000 Recommendations as a Potential New Data Source for Research Evaluation: A Comparison With Citations," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 65(3), pages 433-445, March.
    16. Tian Yu & Guang Yu & Peng-Yu Li & Liang Wang, 2014. "Citation impact prediction for scientific papers using stepwise regression analysis," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 101(2), pages 1233-1252, November.
    17. John G. Cragg & Russell S. Uhler, 1970. "The Demand for Automobiles," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 3(3), pages 386-406, August.
    18. Henry Small, 2004. "On the shoulders of Robert Merton: Towards a normative theory of citation," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 60(1), pages 71-79, May.
    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. Dongyu Zang & Chunli Liu, 2023. "Exploring the clinical translation intensity of papers published by the world’s top scientists in basic medicine," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 128(4), pages 2371-2416, April.
    2. Juan Xie & Kaile Gong & Jiang Li & Qing Ke & Hyonchol Kang & Ying Cheng, 2019. "A probe into 66 factors which are possibly associated with the number of citations an article received," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 119(3), pages 1429-1454, June.
    3. Drahomira Herrmannova & Robert M. Patton & Petr Knoth & Christopher G. Stahl, 2018. "Do citations and readership identify seminal publications?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 115(1), pages 239-262, April.
    4. Bornmann, Lutz & Leydesdorff, Loet, 2017. "Skewness of citation impact data and covariates of citation distributions: A large-scale empirical analysis based on Web of Science data," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 11(1), pages 164-175.
    5. Houqiang Yu & Yue Wang & Shah Hussain & Haoyang Song, 2023. "Towards a better understanding of Facebook Altmetrics in LIS field: assessing the characteristics of involved paper, user and post," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 128(5), pages 3147-3170, May.
    6. Zahedi, Zohreh & Haustein, Stefanie, 2018. "On the relationships between bibliographic characteristics of scientific documents and citation and Mendeley readership counts: A large-scale analysis of Web of Science publications," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 12(1), pages 191-202.
    7. Mingyang Wang & Shi Li & Guangsheng Chen, 2017. "Detecting latent referential articles based on their vitality performance in the latest 2 years," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 112(3), pages 1557-1571, September.
    8. Wang, Peiling & Su, Jing, 2021. "Post-publication expert recommendations in faculty opinions (F1000Prime): Recommended articles and citations," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 15(3).
    9. Xiomara S. Q. Chacon & Thiago C. Silva & Diego R. Amancio, 2020. "Comparing the impact of subfields in scientific journals," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 125(1), pages 625-639, October.
    10. Mingyue Sun & Tingcan Ma & Lewei Zhou & Mingliang Yue, 2023. "Analysis of the relationships among paper citation and its influencing factors: a Bayesian network-based approach," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 128(5), pages 3017-3033, May.
    11. Peiling Wang & Joshua Williams & Nan Zhang & Qiang Wu, 2020. "F1000Prime recommended articles and their citations: an exploratory study of four journals," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 122(2), pages 933-955, February.
    12. Fernández, Ana María & Ferrándiz, Esther & Medina, Jennifer, 2022. "The diffusion of energy technologies. Evidence from renewable, fossil, and nuclear energy patents," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 178(C).
    13. Juan Xie & Kaile Gong & Ying Cheng & Qing Ke, 2019. "The correlation between paper length and citations: a meta-analysis," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 118(3), pages 763-786, March.
    14. Bornmann, Lutz, 2019. "Does the normalized citation impact of universities profit from certain properties of their published documents – such as the number of authors and the impact factor of the publishing journals? A mult," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 13(1), pages 170-184.
    15. Mojisola Erdt & Aarthy Nagarajan & Sei-Ching Joanna Sin & Yin-Leng Theng, 2016. "Altmetrics: an analysis of the state-of-the-art in measuring research impact on social media," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 109(2), pages 1117-1166, November.

    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. Bornmann, Lutz, 2019. "Does the normalized citation impact of universities profit from certain properties of their published documents – such as the number of authors and the impact factor of the publishing journals? A mult," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 13(1), pages 170-184.
    2. Mingyang Wang & Zhenyu Wang & Guangsheng Chen, 2019. "Which can better predict the future success of articles? Bibliometric indices or alternative metrics," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 119(3), pages 1575-1595, June.
    3. Martorell Cunil, Onofre & Otero González, Luis & Durán Santomil, Pablo & Mulet Forteza, Carlos, 2023. "How to accomplish a highly cited paper in the tourism, leisure and hospitality field," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 157(C).
    4. Kaile Gong & Juan Xie & Ying Cheng & Vincent Larivière & Cassidy R. Sugimoto, 2019. "The citation advantage of foreign language references for Chinese social science papers," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 120(3), pages 1439-1460, September.
    5. Bornmann, Lutz & Haunschild, Robin & Mutz, Rüdiger, 2020. "Should citations be field-normalized in evaluative bibliometrics? An empirical analysis based on propensity score matching," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 14(4).
    6. Iman Tahamtan & Askar Safipour Afshar & Khadijeh Ahamdzadeh, 2016. "Factors affecting number of citations: a comprehensive review of the literature," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 107(3), pages 1195-1225, June.
    7. Bornmann, Lutz & Marx, Werner, 2015. "Methods for the generation of normalized citation impact scores in bibliometrics: Which method best reflects the judgements of experts?," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 9(2), pages 408-418.
    8. Nunkoo, Robin & Hall, C. Michael & Rughoobur-Seetah, Soujata & Teeroovengadum, Viraiyan, 2019. "Citation practices in tourism research: Toward a gender conscientious engagement," Annals of Tourism Research, Elsevier, vol. 79(C).
    9. Ajiferuke, Isola & Famoye, Felix, 2015. "Modelling count response variables in informetric studies: Comparison among count, linear, and lognormal regression models," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 9(3), pages 499-513.
    10. Bornmann, Lutz & Leydesdorff, Loet, 2017. "Skewness of citation impact data and covariates of citation distributions: A large-scale empirical analysis based on Web of Science data," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 11(1), pages 164-175.
    11. Tahamtan, Iman & Bornmann, Lutz, 2018. "Core elements in the process of citing publications: Conceptual overview of the literature," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 12(1), pages 203-216.
    12. Ruan, Xuanmin & Zhu, Yuanyang & Li, Jiang & Cheng, Ying, 2020. "Predicting the citation counts of individual papers via a BP neural network," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 14(3).
    13. Thelwall, Mike & Wilson, Paul, 2014. "Regression for citation data: An evaluation of different methods," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 8(4), pages 963-971.
    14. Mojisola Erdt & Aarthy Nagarajan & Sei-Ching Joanna Sin & Yin-Leng Theng, 2016. "Altmetrics: an analysis of the state-of-the-art in measuring research impact on social media," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 109(2), pages 1117-1166, November.
    15. Fan, Lingxu & Guo, Lei & Wang, Xinhua & Xu, Liancheng & Liu, Fangai, 2022. "Does the author’s collaboration mode lead to papers’ different citation impacts? An empirical analysis based on propensity score matching," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 16(4).
    16. Bornmann, Lutz & Haunschild, Robin, 2018. "Normalization of zero-inflated data: An empirical analysis of a new indicator family and its use with altmetrics data," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 12(3), pages 998-1011.
    17. Bornmann, Lutz & Marx, Werner, 2018. "Critical rationalism and the search for standard (field-normalized) indicators in bibliometrics," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 12(3), pages 598-604.
    18. Zhang, Xinyuan & Xie, Qing & Song, Min, 2021. "Measuring the impact of novelty, bibliometric, and academic-network factors on citation count using a neural network," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 15(2).
    19. Elizabeth S. Vieira, 2023. "The influence of research collaboration on citation impact: the countries in the European Innovation Scoreboard," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 128(6), pages 3555-3579, June.
    20. Bornmann, Lutz & Leydesdorff, Loet & Wang, Jian, 2014. "How to improve the prediction based on citation impact percentiles for years shortly after the publication date?," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 8(1), pages 175-180.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Citation impact; F1000; Web of Science; Prediction;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    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:eee:infome:v:9:y:2015:i:3:p:419-429. 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: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/joi .

    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.