References-Citations Relationship

[Pikas, Christina K.]

Seems like you could test whether a document covered multiple subfields by clustering the references. They would probably cluster into methods and content clusters, but would the content (related work) citations cluster into subfields? Would you do it on journal names, words in the title or by pulling the full text? So then you would bin the article into one and more than one subfield bins and test the citedness means.  

Yes, the variation can be explained as Phil says, but I think Ronald's scenario is plausible and could be tested. (maybe it has been already?)

Christina Pikas

----
Christina K Pikas
Librarian
The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory
Christina.Pikas at jhuapl.edu
(240) 228 4812 (DC area)
(443) 778 4812 (Baltimore area)




-----Original Message-----
From: ASIS&T Special Interest Group on Metrics [mailto:SIGMETRICS at listserv.utk.edu] On Behalf Of Ronald Rousseau
Sent: Thursday, August 19, 2010 2:11 AM
To: SIGMETRICS at listserv.utk.edu
Subject: [SIGMETRICS] References-Citations Relationship


Dear colleagues,

I believe in the following scenario. An article that deals with  
several topics (is related to several subfields) has a higher  
probability of being useful (i.e. being cited) to at least one  
subfield than an article that is related to just one subfield. It is,  
moreover, probably richer in ideas.

Moreover, an article related to several subfields has on average a  
longer reference list than an article dealing with one topic (or  
related to one subfield).

Hence, there might be a relation between longer reference lists and  
receiving more citations, although the length of the reference list  
itself is not the cause of this relationship.

Who proves or disproves this conjecture?

Best regards,

Ronald Rousseau


-- 
Ronald Rousseau
President of the ISSI
KHBO - Association K.U.Leuven
Industrial Sciences and Technology
Zeedijk 101 -  8400  Oostende,  Belgium
Professor associated to K.U.Leuven
Guest Professor Antwerp University, IBW
Honorary Professor Henan Normal University (Xinxiang, China)
Adjunct professor of Shanghai University
Guest Professor at the National Library of Sciences CAS (Beijing)
Guest Professor at Dalian University of Technology
Honorary researcher at Zhejiang University, Information Resources Management
Institute
E-mail: ronald.rousseau at khbo.be
web page:  http://users.telenet.be/ronald.rousseau

There is nothing more practical than a good theory (Hilbert)

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