Academic Elegance in Library and Information Science: Citation Patterns in High-Impact Journals

The cumulative characteristic of science has led to the practice of citation in scientific works. However, citations serve a dual purpose, not only as a means to acknowledge cumulative knowledge but also as a mechanism to substantiate empirical claims within scientific discourse. Over time, whom and what is cited among the increasing number of scientific literature has started to gain importance. In this study, the hypothesis that authors who publish in qualified journals, cite works in qualified journals, which this phenomenon has been defined as “academic elegance,†was analyzed. To answer this question, the works in 164 Librarianship and Information Science journals indexed in WoS and the references of these studies were analyzed. Within the scope of the study, 8,416,138 references in a total of 240,069 works were analyzed in the data set divided into three periods (1945–1972, 1973–1997, and 1998–2022). The chord diagrams show the sources cited by the works in the journals in each quartile according to the journal quartiles (Q1–Q4) in the JCR. According to the findings, in the period 1998 to 2022, the rate of citing studies published in journals indexed in WoS is close to half (45%, higher than in other periods). Also, when the chord diagrams of each period are analyzed, it can be roughly said that the potential citation performance (quartile value) of the journal in which the cited work is included largely matches the potential citation performance of the journals in whose bibliography the studies are included.