The role of trust and authority in the citation behaviour of researchers

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Introduction

This paper reports on an interview-based citation behaviour study, part of a wider study of trust in information resources, investigating why researchers chose to cite particular references in one of their publications. Their motivations are explored, with an emphasis on whether they regarded the reference as an authoritative and trustworthy source, and, if so, to what extent and why.

Method

Semi-structured critical incident interviews were carried out with eighty-seven researchers from the UK and the USA.

Analysis

The answers were analysed using qualitative techniques and then grouped under descriptive headings of the types of reasons for citation provided. These were then used to create a table of these types of reason and the frequency of their use.

Results

The motivations for citing were found to be complex and multi-faceted but, in nearly all cases, researchers do regard the authority and trustworthiness of the cited source as an important factor in choosing to cite it. This suggests that citation is at least partly an acknowledgement of the intellectual influence of the content of the cited source. It was also found, however, that researchers have strong social networks of trust and collaboration. They make considerable use of these in receiving and gathering information for research and thus context is also important in their eventual citation decisions.

Conclusions

Citing behaviour does include an acknowledgement of useful intellectual content, but this process cannot be separated from the researcher’s position in networks of trusted social and research influence. The digital transition has provided tools to help maintain and develop these social networks and it has also made it easier for researchers to investigate the credentials of the sources of documents. This suggests that the current distinction in the literature between normative and constructionist theories of citation behaviour may not capture the nuanced and complex relationship between these two factors.

URL : http://www.informationr.net/ir/20-3/paper677.html

Why and where Wikipedia is cited in journal articles?

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“The aim of this research was to identify the motivations for citation to Wikipedia in scientific papers. Also, the number of citation to Wikipedia, location of citation, type of citing papers, subject of citing and cited articles were determined and compared in different subject fields. From all English articles indexed in Scopus in 2007 and 2012 that have cited Wikipedia, 602 articles were selected using stratified random sampling. Content analysis and bibliometric methods were used to carry out the research. Results showed that there are 20 motivations for citing Wikipedia and the most frequent of them are providing general information and definition, facts and figures. Citations to Wikipedia often were in the introduction and introductory sections of papers. Computer sciences, internet and chemistry were the most cited subjects. The use of Wikipedia in articles is increasing both in terms of quantity and diversity. However, there are disciplinary differences both in the amount and the nature of use of Wikipedia.”

URL : http://www.jscires.org/text.asp?2013/2/3/231/135415

The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Poorer: The Effect of Open Access on Cites to Science Journals Across the Quality Spectrum

An open-access journal allows free online access to its articles, obtaining revenue from fees charged to submitting authors. Using panel data on science journals, we are able to circumvent some problems plaguing previous studies of the impact of open access on citations.

We find that moving from paid to open access increases cites by 8% on average in our sample, but the effect varies across the quality of content. Open access increases cites to the best content (top-ranked journals or articles in upper quintiles of citations within a volume) but reduces cites to lower-quality content.

We construct a model to explain these findings in which being placed on a broad open-access platform can increase the competition among articles for readers’ attention. We can find structural parameters allowing the model to fit the quintile results quite closely.

URL : http://ssrn.com/abstract=2269040

Collaboration scientifique et citations des articles Quelles pratiques…

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Collaboration scientifique et citations des articles : Quelles pratiques dans les revues médicales ? :

“Objectifs : La meilleure façon de caractériser la collaboration scientifique est d’étudier la co-signature des articles. Deux indicateurs sont intéressants : le nombre d’auteurs et son caractère international. L’objectif est d’étudier la corrélation entre ces deux indicateurs et le nombre de citations.

Méthodes : Nous avons sélectionné deux journaux de pharmacie et médecine afin de comparer les pratiques. Nous avons utilisé un échantillon d’environ 800 articles publiés entre 2002 et 2005 dont nous avons collecté les citations jusqu’en 2010. Nous avons transformé nos variables numériques, nombre d’auteurs et nombre de citations, en variables qualitatives.

Résultats : Les variables «auteurs» et «citations» ne sont pas indépendantes.

Conclusions. Les articles les moins cités sont souvent publiés par un seul auteur ou par une équipe très réduite alors que le caractère international des articles est un facteur qui en général augmente le nombre de citations. Cette micro-analyse a permis également de mieux appréhender certaines pratiques éditoriales.”

URL : http://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00775307

Beyond Citations: Scholars’ Visibility on the Social Web

Traditionally, scholarly impact and visibility have been measured by counting publications and citations in the scholarly literature. However, increasingly scholars are also visible on the Web, establishing presences in a growing variety of social ecosystems.

But how wide and established is this presence, and how do measures of social Web impact relate to their more traditional counterparts? To answer this, we sampled 57 presenters from the 2010 Leiden STI Conference, gathering publication and citations counts as well as data from the presenters’ Web “footprints.”

We found Web presence widespread and diverse: 84% of scholars had homepages, 70% were on LinkedIn, 23% had public Google Scholar profiles, and 16% were on Twitter. For sampled scholars’ publications, social reference manager bookmarks were compared to Scopus and Web of Science citations; we found that Mendeley covers more than 80% of sampled articles, and that Mendeley bookmarks are significantly correlated (r=.45) to Scopus citation counts.”

URL : http://2012.sticonference.org/Proceedings/vol1/Bar-Ilan_Beyond_98.pdf

On the Citation Advantage of linking to data…

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On the Citation Advantage of linking to data :

“This paper present some indications of the existence of a Citation Advantage related to linked data, using astrophysics as a case. Using simple measures, I find that the Citation Advantage presently (at the least since 2009) amounts to papers with links to data receiving on the average 50% more citations per paper per year, than the papers without links to data. A similar study by other authors should a cummulative effect after several years amounting to 20%. Hence, a Data Sharing Citation Advantage seems inevitable.”

URL : http://hprints.org/hprints-00714715

Promotion of research articles to the lay press…

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Promotion of research articles to the lay press: a summary of a three-year project :

“The promotion of scholarly journal articles to journalists and bloggers via the dissemination of press releases generates a positive impact on the number of citations that publicized journal articles receive. Research by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. shows that article-level publicity efforts and media coverage boosts downloads by an average of 1.8 times and were found to increase citations by as much as 2.0-2.2 times in the articles analyzed in this study. We evaluated scholarly journal articles published in nearly 100 Wiley journals, which were also covered in 296 press releases. The results in this case study suggest a need for greater investment in media support for scholarly journals publishing research that sparks interest to a broad news audience, as it could increase citations.”

URL : http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/alpsp/lp/2012/00000025/00000003/art00007