Yang, SL; Ma, F; Song, YH; Qiu, JP. 2010. A longitudinal analysis of citation distribution breadth for Chinese scholars. SCIENTOMETRICS 85 (3): 755-765

[Eugene Garfield]

Yang, SL; Ma, F; Song, YH; Qiu, JP. 2010. A longitudinal analysis of citation 
distribution breadth for Chinese scholars. SCIENTOMETRICS 85 (3): 755-765

Author Full Name(s): Yang, Siluo; Ma, Feng; Song, Yanhui; Qiu, Junping
Language: English
Document Type: Article

Author Keywords: Citations analysis; Bibliometrics; Citing behavior; China; 
Reform and opening up
KeyWords Plus: SCIENTIFIC PUBLICATIONS; WEB; SCIENCE; UNCITEDNESS

Abstract: Over the past 30 years, the research behavior of Chinese scholars 
has continually evolved. This paper studied the citing behavior of Chinese 
scholars by employing three indicators of citation concentration from the 
perspective of citation breadth analysis. All the citations from 2,338,033 papers 
from the Chinese Citation Database (1979-2008) covering four disciplines-
Chemistry; Clinical Medicine; Library, Information and Archival Science; and 
Chinese Literature and World Literature-were analyzed. Empirical results show a 
general weakening tendency towards citation concentration: (1) decreasing 
percentage of uncited published papers within a given year; (2) a higher 
percentage of papers required to account for the same proportion of citation 
than before; and (3) the steady decline in the Herfindahl-Hirschman index (HHI) 
of citation distribution. All three measures indicate a decline in citing 
concentration or an increase in citation breadth. This phenomenon may be the 
result of increased access to materials, perhaps because of the ease with 
which scholarly materials can be accessed through the Internet.

Addresses: [Yang, Siluo] Xiangtan Univ, Publ Management Sch, Xiangtan, 
Peoples R China; [Ma, Feng; Song, Yanhui; Qiu, Junping] Wuhan Univ, Res Ctr 
Chinese Sci Evaluat, Wuhan 430072, Peoples R China
Reprint Address: Yang, SL, Xiangtan Univ, Publ Management Sch, Xiangtan, 
Peoples R China.

E-mail Address: slyang2005 at yahoo.com.cn
ISSN: 0138-9130
DOI: 10.1007/s11192-010-0245-1
fulltext: http://www.springerlink.com/content/u284q2n12304w112/