Influence of selected factors in journals’ citations
| Pages | 90-104 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/AJIM-07-2017-0170 |
| Published date | 21 January 2019 |
| Date | 21 January 2019 |
| Author | Rabishankar Giri |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science,Information behaviour & retrieval,Information & knowledge management,Information management & governance,Information management |
Influence of selected factors in
journals’citations
Rabishankar Giri
Presidency University Kolkata, Kolkata, India
Abstract
Purpose –The purpose of this paper is to explore the influence of selected factors in journal citations.
Various factors can affect citations distribution of journals. Among them, skewness of citations distribution,
author self-citation, journal self-citation and recitations (RCs) have been studied.
Design/methodology/approach –The present study based on 16 systematically selected journals indexed in
Scopus under the subject category “Library and Information Science.”The study was confined to original research
and review articles that were published in the selected journals in the year 2011. The temporal citation window
from 2011 to 2014 was taken for analysis. Tools like, Scopus author ID, ORCID and author profiles from Google
Scholar were used to minimize the error due to homonyms, spelling variances and misspelling in authors’names.
Findings –It is found that citationsdistribution in majority of the journalsunder the study is highly skewed
and morelikely to follow log-normal distribution.The nature of authorshipin papers was found to have positive
effecton citation counts. Self-citingdata show that higher ranked journalshave rather less direct impacton total
citation counts than their lower counterpart. RCs are also found to be more in top-tier journals. Though the
influence of self-citations and RCs were relatively less at individual level on total citations of journals but
combined, they canplay a dominant role and can affect totalcitation counts of journals at significant level.
Research limitations/implications –The present study is based on Scopus database only. Therefore,
citation data can be affected by the inherent limitation of Scopus. Readers are encouraged to further the study
by taking into account large sample and tracing citations from an array of citation indexes, such as Web of
Science, Google citations, Indian Citation Index, etc.
Originality/value –This paper reinforces that the citations received by journals can be affected by the
factors selected in this study. Therefore, the study provides better understanding of the role of these selected
factors in journal citations.
Keywords Citation analysis, Journal ranking, Author self-citation, Journal self-citation, Recitation,
Skewness of citation distribution
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
Academic journals play a crucial role in today’s world of science communication with at least
three objectives: validation, diffusion and archival. Journal publishing, thus, should have a
meticulous quality control process in order to meet the expectation of the scientific community
(Zitt, 2012). Quality control like detection of falsification of results, fraud, plagiarism, etc., is an
editorial process and it is quite difficult to determine how ethically and sincerely journal editors
are maintaining quality requirements of scientific publications. Numerous methods have been
proposed by researchers to determine the quality of scientific publications in an alternative way.
The peer review method is considered to be the most reliable approach among them to assess
the quality of a research publication by the broad academic community. It, however, has its
limitations like subjectivity, which may result in conflicts of interests, unawareness of quality or
anegativebiasagainstyoungerpeopleornewcomerstothefield(vanRaan,2005).Peerreview
process is also very expensive and time-consuming as the size and ramification of research
domains grew beyond manageable limits. These limiting factors of peer review prompted
researchers and policy makers to seek other reliable, objective and economical methods.
Aslib Journal of Information
Management
Vol. 71 No. 1, 2019
pp. 90-104
© Emerald PublishingLimited
2050-3806
DOI 10.1108/AJIM-07-2017-0170
Received 31 July 2017
Revised 9 August 2018
1 October 2018
Accepted 28 October 2018
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/2050-3806.htm
The author is grateful to three anonymous referees for their useful suggestions on two earlier versions
of this paper and to Dr Sourav Dey (Assistant Professor of Statistics, Presidency University) for his
insightful teaching that enabled the author to employ suitable statistical methods in analyzing the
data. The author is also grateful to Dr Sabuj K. Chowdhury at University of Calcutta for helping me
straighten my arguments.
90
AJIM
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