Studies showing that review articles get more citations

[Stevan Harnad]

On Tue, Feb 23, 2010 at 8:51 AM, Tom Wilson <wilsontd at gmail.com> wrote:

>  Is it really worth exploring?
>
>  I'd have thought it self-evident that, if you are looking for a review of
> the literature, as most authors are, you'll site existing reviews; similarly
> with methodology - if you are using a particular theoretical perspective
> you'll want to cite others as confirmation that you are on the right track.
>  One of the problems of bibliometrics appears to be a stunning facility for
> determining the obvious :-)

It is obvious that reviews will cite reviews, and that authors will
cite supporting studies, but is it obvious that reviews are cited more
than ordinary articles? Perhaps; but it would still be nice to see the
evidence. Especially nice to see the evidence for review *articles* --
relative to ordinary articles -- separated from the evidence for
review *journals* relative to ordinary journals.

There has also been some evidence that articles that cite more
references get more citations. Review articles usually cite more
references than ordinary articles (indeed, that is one of the criteria
ISI uses for classifying articles as reviews!). It would be nice to
partial out the respective contributions of these factors too (along,
of course, with self-citations, co-author citations, citation circles,
etc.).

The outcomes may continue to be confirming the obvious, but it will
still be nice to have the objective data at hand... :-)

Stevan Harnad

> Tom Wilson
>
> On 23 February 2010 12:23, Jacques Wainer <wainer at ic.unicamp.br> wrote:
>>
>> Adminstrative info for SIGMETRICS (for example unsubscribe):
>> http://web.utk.edu/~gwhitney/sigmetrics.html
>>
>> I used:
>>
>> @Article{reviewpap1,
>>  author =       {Aksnes, D. W.},
>>  title =        {Citation rates and perceptions of scientific
>> contribution},
>>  journal =      {Journal of the American Society for Information Science
>> and Technology},
>>  year =         2006,
>>  key =          2,
>>  volume =       57,
>>  pages =        {169-185},
>> doi = {10.1002/asi.20262}}
>>
>>
>> @Article{reviewpap3,
>>  author =       {H. P. F. Peters  and  A. F. J. van Raan},
>>  title =        {On determinants of citation scores: A case study in
>> chemical engineering},
>>  journal =      {Journal of the American Society for Information Science},
>>  year =         1994,
>>  volume =       45,
>>  number =       1,
>>  pages =        {39 - 49}}
>>
>>
>> as two references to the phenomenon. In this line, does anyone know
>> of studies that point out that METHODOLOGICAL papers are also cited more
>> than other research?
>>
>> Thanks
>>
>> Jacques Wainer
>
>
>
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> ----------------------------------------------------------
> Professor Tom Wilson, PhD, PhD (h.c.),
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