Ball, P (Ball, Philip) A longer paper gathers more citations NATURE, 455 (7211): 274-275 SEP 18 2008

[Stephen J Bensman]

I have read this article for the hell of it, and, just as I suspected,
Ball does not appear to know that review articles are longer but more
highly cited than other types of article in the sciences for very good
functional reasons.  He is trying to make a joke of citation analysis,
but he appears to be ignorant of the very basics of citation analysis,
so that he does not take into account this important variable.
Historically the Nature editorial board has been extremely hostile to
citation analysis that they will publish anything anti-citation no
matter how ignorant or inaccurate.  Again--for the hell of it--I looked
up the top journal in impact factor in the 2007 JCR, and it is--just as
I suspected-- ANNUAL REVIEW OF ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS published by
Annual Reviews.  The next journal has also a high proportion of review
articles.  Anybody interested in the reasons why review articles are
more highly cited in the sciences may consult my paper at the following
URL:

http://garfield.library.upenn.edu/bensman/bensman072008.pdf

It all has something to do with the need for consensual paradigms in the
sciences.

Stephen J. Bensman
LSU Libraries
Louisiana State University
Baton Rouge, LA   70803
USA
notsjb at lsu.edu

-----Original Message-----
From: ASIS&T Special Interest Group on Metrics
[mailto:SIGMETRICS at LISTSERV.UTK.EDU] On Behalf Of Eugene Garfield
Sent: Monday, December 01, 2008 3:29 PM
To: SIGMETRICS at LISTSERV.UTK.EDU
Subject: [SIGMETRICS] Ball, P (Ball, Philip) A longer paper gathers more
citations NATURE, 455 (7211): 274-275 SEP 18 2008


Email Address: p.ball at nature.com

Author(s): Ball, P (Ball, Philip) 

Title: A longer paper gathers more citations 

Source: NATURE, 455 (7211): 274-275 SEP 18 2008 

Excerpt: Researchers could garner more citations simply by making their 
papers longer, a study seems to imply.

In an analysis of 30,027 peer-reviews papers published between 2000 and 
2004 in top astronomy journals, astronomer Krzystof Stanek of Ohio State

University in Columbus found that the median number of citations
increases 
with the length of the paper - from just 6 for papers of 2-3 pages to 
about 50 for 50-page papers.

There is, however, a limit to the benefits of size: citations start to 
tail off when papers reach lengths of 80 pages or so, perhaps because 
fewer people have the stamina to read them.

It is unexpected, says astronomer Jorg Dietrich of the European Southern

Observatory headquarters in Germany, who recently conducted a similar 
analysis and found the same results but didn't publish them. "I expected

that shorter papers would be cited more than longer ones," he says.  "I 
assumed that people don't have time to read long papers."

Language: English 

Document Type: News Item 

Cited Reference Count: 5 

Times Cited: 0 

Publisher: NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP 

Publisher Address: MACMILLAN BUILDING, 4 CRINAN ST, LONDON N1 9XW,
ENGLAND 

ISSN: 0028-0836 

DOI: 10.1038/455274a 

29-char Source Abbrev.: NATURE 

ISO Source Abbrev.: Nature 

Source Item Page Count: 2 

Subject Category: Multidisciplinary Sciences 

ISI Document Delivery No.: 349EX