ABS: Ayres, Determinants of citations to articles in elite law reviews

[Gretchen Whitney]

E-mail :   ian.ayres at yale.edu

Title           Determinants of citations to articles in elite law reviews
Author          Ayres I, Vars FE
Journal         JOURNAL OF LEGAL STUDIES 29 (1): 427-450, Part 2 JAN 2000

 Document type: Article      Language: English      Cited References: 24
Times Cited: 0

Abstract (Excerpts from Conclusions follow works cited):
This article analyzes the determinants of citations to pieces published from
1980 to 1995 in Harvard Law Review, Stanford Law Review, and
The Yale Law Journal. We also rank articles by number of citations using
regressions controlling for time since publication, journal, and subject
area. To summarize a few of our results: citations per year peak at 4 years
after publication, and an article receives half of its expected total
lifetime citations after 4.6 years; appearing first in an issue is a
significant advantage; international law articles receive fewer citations;
jurisprudence articles are cited more often; articles by young, female, or
minority authors are more heavily cited. Articles with shorter titles, fewer
footnotes per page, and without equations have significantly more citations
than other articles. Total citations generally increase with an article's
length, but citations per published page peak at 53 pages.

Addresses:
Ayres I, Yale Univ, Sch Law, New Haven, CT 06520 USA
Yale Univ, Sch Law, New Haven, CT 06520 USA

Publisher:
UNIV CHICAGO PRESS, CHICAGO

IDS Number:
339PD

ISSN:
0047-2530

Cited Author            Cited Work                Volume      Page      Year

 AYRES I               STANFORD LAW REV              46       987      1994
 BALKIN JM             CHI KENT L REV                71       843      1996
 CURRIE DP             U CHICAGO LAW REV             50       466      1983
 DELGADO R             U PENN LAW REV               132       561      1984
 EASTERBROOK FH        U CHICAGO LAW REV             50       481      1983
 EISENBERG T           J LEGAL STUD 1                27       373      1998
 GOULD SJ              FLAMINGOS SMILE                        218      1985
 GREENE WH             ECONOMETRIC ANAL                       485      1990
 GUNTHER G             LEARNED HAND MAN JUD                            1994
 LANDES WM             CHI KENT L REV                71       825      1996
 LANDES WM             J LEGAL STUD 1                27       271      1998
 LEVIT N               CHI KENT L REV                71       947      1996
 LEVIT N               CHI KENT L REV                71       952      1996
 LINDGREN J            CHI KENT L REV                71       781      1996
 LINDREN J             CHI KENT L REV                71       786      1996
 LUCAS RE              CARNEGIE-ROCHESTER C           1        19      1976
 MERRITT DJ            CHI KENT L REV                71       871      1996
 POSNER RA             CARDOZO STUDY REPUTA                            1990
 POSNER RA             J LAW ECON                    36       385      1993
 POSNER RA             YALE LAW J                   104       511      1994
 SHAPIRO FR            CALIF LAW REV                 73      1540      1985
 SHAPIRO FR            CHI KENT L REV                71       751      1996
 SHAPIRO FR            YALE LAW J                   100      1449      1991
 SMART S               WORKING PAPER NATL W        5460                1996



EXCERPTS :

CONCLUSION:
There may be a strong temptation to read many of our results as recipes for
citation success. Authors (or law review editors) might think that they
could increase their citations if they just publish longer articles or shift
toward publishing constitutional law pieces.  Such inferences are fraught
with peril.  The fallacy of aggregation suggests that just because long
articles have tended to be cited more in the past does not mean that
journals should force authors to add 10 pages of pablum to their articles in
order to generate more citations.  Still, with regard to an individual
article, it is hard to resist thinking that affixing a shorter title might
not increase the number of citations.

Citations analysis also unavoidably has a gossipy and at times tawdry
aspect.  We are drawn to citation rankings -- reading and discussing them
around the water cooler -- but we are simultaneously repulsed by them --
criticizing their meanings (especially when we are excluded).  Given the
endemic identification problems discussed above, extreme modesty is in
order.  Indeed while there is a certain ineffable value to these studies, we
wonder whether this value justifies the time and journal pages devoted to
the subject.

APPENDIX
Description of the Data
Our source of citations data was the SSCI compiled by the Institute for
Scientific Information.  We extracted citation, self-citation, and citation
by citing year counts for every piece in the Harvard, Stanford, and Yale law
reviews.  The electronic version of the SSCI we used covered the period from
1980 to 1997, with only partial coverage in the first and last years.  We
used all of this citing information but limited the scope of cited pieces to
the period from 1980 to 1994-95 volume of each journal.  Next we examined in
hard copy each piece on the list to determine how the journal classified it.
We eliminated student-written work (notes, book notes, case notes,
developments in the law, and so forth) tributes, corespondence, and book
reviews.  The remaining pieces included all articles, essays, commentaries,
Harvard forewords, and symposium pieces.  In order to maintain a minimal
degree of comparability among the pieces, we also eliminated all pieces with
fewer than five pages and pieces shorter than 10 pages with no citations.
In the end, we were left with a total sample size of 979 pieces, including
530 articles.

-------------------------------------------------------------
(c) ISI, Reprinted with permission
Please visit their website at www.isinet.com
-------------------------------------------------------------