IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jpubli/v12y2024i4p35-d1498992.html

Is Citation Count a Legitimate Indicator of Scientific Impact? A Case Study of Upper (1974) “The Unsuccessful Self-Treatment of a Case of Writer’s Block” and Its Derivatives

Author

Listed:
  • Andy Wai Kan Yeung

    (Oral and Maxillofacial Radiology, Applied Oral Sciences and Community Dental Care, Faculty of Dentistry, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China)

Abstract

The work by Upper (1974) was a blank paper. Multiple replication studies were published. This work examined the number of citations received by these papers, and manually checked the citing papers to determine why they made the citations. The Dimensions literature database was queried with the search string: (unsuccessful treatment writer’s block). The search yielded 14 articles, two of which were irrelevant and excluded. The 12 papers remained after screening included the original study by Upper (1974), nine replication studies, one review, and one meta-analysis. The original work received 43 citations, but related works had fewer than 10 citations each. One fourth of citations of Upper (1974) were being satiric on “nothing” or “precise” from papers dealing with unrelated concepts, and five citations were deemed erroneous/digressed. One citation was made to acknowledge the reviewer’s comments to Upper (1974), which did not involve Upper’s own ideas. This work exposed a scenario where there were limitations of using citation count as the only metric to gauge scientific impact of journal articles.

Suggested Citation

  • Andy Wai Kan Yeung, 2024. "Is Citation Count a Legitimate Indicator of Scientific Impact? A Case Study of Upper (1974) “The Unsuccessful Self-Treatment of a Case of Writer’s Block” and Its Derivatives," Publications, MDPI, vol. 12(4), pages 1-10, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jpubli:v:12:y:2024:i:4:p:35-:d:1498992
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2304-6775/12/4/35/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2304-6775/12/4/35/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Igor Podlubny, 2005. "Comparison of scientific impact expressed by the number of citations in different fields of science," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 64(1), pages 95-99, July.
    2. Jaime A. Teixeira da Silva, 2021. "The Matthew effect impacts science and academic publishing by preferentially amplifying citations, metrics and status," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(6), pages 5373-5377, June.
    3. Jaime A. Teixeira Silva & Neil J. Vickers & Serhii Nazarovets, 2024. "From citation metrics to citation ethics: Critical examination of a highly-cited 2017 moth pheromone paper," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 129(1), pages 693-703, January.
    4. Dag W. Aksnes & Liv Langfeldt & Paul Wouters, 2019. "Citations, Citation Indicators, and Research Quality: An Overview of Basic Concepts and Theories," SAGE Open, , vol. 9(1), pages 21582440198, February.
    5. Jaime A. Teixeira da Silva & Quan-Hoang Vuong, 2021. "The right to refuse unwanted citations: rethinking the culture of science around the citation," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(6), pages 5355-5360, June.
    6. Jaime A. Teixeira da Silva & Judit Dobránszki, 2017. "Highly cited retracted papers," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 110(3), pages 1653-1661, March.
    7. Tanzila Ahmed & Ben Johnson & Charles Oppenheim & Catherine Peck, 2004. "Highly cited old papers and the reasons why they continue to be cited. Part II., The 1953 Watson and Crick article on the structure of DNA," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 61(2), pages 147-156, October.
    8. Charles Oppenheim & Susan P. Renn, 1978. "Highly cited old papers and the reasons why they continue to be cited," Journal of the American Society for Information Science, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 29(5), pages 225-231, September.
    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. Chi-Shiou Lin, 2018. "An analysis of citation functions in the humanities and social sciences research from the perspective of problematic citation analysis assumptions," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 116(2), pages 797-813, August.
    2. Jaime A. Teixeira da Silva, 2024. "The inaccurate representation of an author’s publishing name, and impact on reference accuracy," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 129(5), pages 2923-2932, May.
    3. Thomas A. Hamrick & Ronald D. Fricker & Gerald G. Brown, 2010. "Assessing What Distinguishes Highly Cited from Less-Cited Papers Published in Interfaces," Interfaces, INFORMS, vol. 40(6), pages 454-464, December.
    4. JingJing Zhang & Jiancheng Guan, 2017. "Scientific relatedness and intellectual base: a citation analysis of un-cited and highly-cited papers in the solar energy field," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 110(1), pages 141-162, January.
    5. Kuniko Matsumoto & Sotaro Shibayama & Byeongwoo Kang & Masatsura Igami, 2021. "Introducing a novelty indicator for scientific research: validating the knowledge-based combinatorial approach," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(8), pages 6891-6915, August.
    6. Lucy Semerjian & Kunle Okaiyeto & Mike O. Ojemaye & Temitope Cyrus Ekundayo & Aboi Igwaran & Anthony I. Okoh, 2021. "Global Systematic Mapping of Road Dust Research from 1906 to 2020: Research Gaps and Future Direction," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(20), pages 1-21, October.
    7. Akinpelu, O.A. & Olaleye, O. & Fagbola, O., . "The Soil Organic Matter Decomposers: A Bibliometric Analysis," International Journal of Agriculture and Environmental Research, Malwa International Journals Publication, vol. 9(4).
    8. Prodhan Mahbub Ibna Seraj & Blanka Klimova & Rubina Khan, 2024. "Visualizing Research Trends in English Language Teaching (ELT) From 2013 to 2022: A Bibliometric Analysis," SAGE Open, , vol. 14(2), pages 21582440241, May.
    9. Alberto Saracco, 2022. "Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Citations," The Mathematical Intelligencer, Springer, vol. 44(4), pages 326-330, December.
    10. Hyeonchae Yang & Woo-Sung Jung, 2015. "A strategic management approach for Korean public research institutes based on bibliometric investigation," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 49(4), pages 1437-1464, July.
    11. Wenxuan Shi & Renli Wu, 2024. "Women’s strength in science: exploring the influence of female participation on research impact and innovation," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 129(7), pages 4529-4551, July.
    12. Tom Coupé & W. Robert Reed, 2021. "Do Negative Replications Affect Citations?," Working Papers in Economics 21/14, University of Canterbury, Department of Economics and Finance.
    13. Liu, Xiaojuan & Wang, Chenlin & Chen, Dar-Zen & Huang, Mu-Hsuan, 2022. "Exploring perception of retraction based on mentioned status in post-retraction citations," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 16(3).
    14. Fuentes, Agustín & Espinoza, Ulises J. & Cobbs, Virginia, 2024. "Follow the citations: Tracing pathways of “race as biology” assumptions in medical algorithms in eGFR and spirometry," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 346(C).
    15. Zhichao Wang & Valentin Zelenyuk, 2021. "Performance Analysis of Hospitals in Australia and its Peers: A Systematic Review," CEPA Working Papers Series WP012021, School of Economics, University of Queensland, Australia.
    16. repec:plo:pone00:0155097 is not listed on IDEAS
    17. Jiri Vanecek, 2008. "Bibliometric analysis of the Czech research publications from 1994 to 2005," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 77(2), pages 345-360, November.
    18. Craig Aaen-Stockdale, 2017. "Selfish Memes: An Update of Richard Dawkins’ Bibliometric Analysis of Key Papers in Sociobiology," Publications, MDPI, vol. 5(2), pages 1-9, May.
    19. Mehdi Rhaiem & Nabil Amara, 2020. "Determinants of research efficiency in Canadian business schools: evidence from scholar-level data," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 125(1), pages 53-99, October.
    20. Frederique Bordignon, 2020. "Self-correction of science: a comparative study of negative citations and post-publication peer review," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 124(2), pages 1225-1239, August.
    21. Jin Su & Mo Wang & Mohd Adib Mohammad Razi & Norlida Mohd Dom & Noralfishah Sulaiman & Lai-Wai Tan, 2023. "A Bibliometric Review of Nature-Based Solutions on Urban Stormwater Management," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(9), pages 1-23, April.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    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:gam:jpubli:v:12:y:2024:i:4:p:35-:d:1498992. 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: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.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.