IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/scient/v110y2017i3d10.1007_s11192-016-2206-9.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Exploration into the evolution and historical roots of citation analysis by referenced publication year spectroscopy

Author

Listed:
  • Jianhua Hou

    (Dalian University)

Abstract

In this study, we investigated the evolution process and historical roots of citation analysis study by reference publication year spectroscopy (RPYS), which is an advanced research method recently introduced in the field of Scientometrics. Through analyzing the publication year and citation frequency of cited references in a knowledge domain, RPYS can identify the citation peak of such cited references. We collected 2543 articles including 56,392 references regarding citation analysis in SCI-E and SSCI databases between 1970 and July 2016 as our data source. Based on the RPYS method by the CRExplorer program, the results showed that the peak citation publication years by chronological order occurred in 1955, 1963, 1973, 1979, 1981, 1990, 2005 and 2008 in the field of citation analysis study. According to the overall distribution of peak citation publication years, the RPYS for citation analysis was divided into five time periods for the convenience of comparison in this paper: that is, before 1900, 1901–1950, 1951–1970, 1971–2000, and 2001–2016. Pre 1950, especially during the 1900s–1950s, before the citation analysis method was introduced, there were three rather high peak citation publication years, Lotka’s law and Bradford’s law laid the knowledge foundation for citation analysis. 1950s–1970s was the forming period of citation analysis, among the three citation peaks in this period, Garfield (Science 122(3159):1127–1128, 1955), Price (Von Der Studierstube Zur 7(3–6):443–458, 1963, Science 149:510–515, 1965), and Kessler (1963) established an important knowledge base for the formation of citation analysis study. 1971–2000 was a developing period of citation analysis. Document Co-citation Analysis and Author Co-citation Analysis methods laid the foundation of the development of citation analysis study. Since 2000, citation analysis study has been expanding rapidly. By the number of published papers and number of cited references with highly cited frequency, Garfield E., White H.D., Small H., MacRoberts M.H., Price D.D. have played an important role in promoting the evolution of citation analysis study.

Suggested Citation

  • Jianhua Hou, 2017. "Exploration into the evolution and historical roots of citation analysis by referenced publication year spectroscopy," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 110(3), pages 1437-1452, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:scient:v:110:y:2017:i:3:d:10.1007_s11192-016-2206-9
    DOI: 10.1007/s11192-016-2206-9
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11192-016-2206-9
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11192-016-2206-9?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Blaise Cronin & Herbert W. Snyder & Howard Rosenbaum & Anna Martinson & Ewa Callahan, 1998. "Invoked on the Web," Journal of the American Society for Information Science, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 49(14), pages 1319-1328.
    2. E. Garfield & I. H. Sher, 1963. "New factors in the evaluation of scientific literature through citation indexing," American Documentation, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 14(3), pages 195-201, July.
    3. Werner Marx & Lutz Bornmann & Andreas Barth & Loet Leydesdorff, 2014. "Detecting the historical roots of research fields by reference publication year spectroscopy (RPYS)," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 65(4), pages 751-764, April.
    4. S. Redner, 1998. "How popular is your paper? An empirical study of the citation distribution," The European Physical Journal B: Condensed Matter and Complex Systems, Springer;EDP Sciences, vol. 4(2), pages 131-134, July.
    5. Chaomei Chen, 2006. "CiteSpace II: Detecting and visualizing emerging trends and transient patterns in scientific literature," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 57(3), pages 359-377, February.
    6. Kevin W. Boyack & Richard Klavans & Katy Börner, 2005. "Mapping the backbone of science," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 64(3), pages 351-374, August.
    7. Michael H. MacRoberts & Barbara R. MacRoberts, 1989. "Problems of citation analysis: A critical review," Journal of the American Society for Information Science, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 40(5), pages 342-349, September.
    8. Henry Small, 1973. "Co‐citation in the scientific literature: A new measure of the relationship between two documents," Journal of the American Society for Information Science, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 24(4), pages 265-269, July.
    9. Ben‐Ami Lipetz, 1965. "Improvement of the selectivity of citation indexes to science literature through inclusion of citation relationship indicators," American Documentation, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 16(2), pages 81-90, April.
    10. Bornmann, Lutz & Marx, Werner, 2013. "The proposal of a broadening of perspective in evaluative bibliometrics by complementing the times cited with a cited reference analysis," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 7(1), pages 84-88.
    11. Norman Kaplan, 1965. "The norms of citation behavior: Prolegomena to the footnote," American Documentation, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 16(3), pages 179-184, July.
    12. Judit Bar-Ilan, 2008. "Which h-index? — A comparison of WoS, Scopus and Google Scholar," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 74(2), pages 257-271, February.
    13. Werner Marx & Lutz Bornmann, 2014. "Tracing the origin of a scientific legend by reference publication year spectroscopy (RPYS): the legend of the Darwin finches," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 99(3), pages 839-844, June.
    14. Comins, Jordan A. & Hussey, Thomas W., 2015. "Compressing multiple scales of impact detection by Reference Publication Year Spectroscopy," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 9(3), pages 449-454.
    15. Chaomei Chen & Fidelia Ibekwe-SanJuan & Jianhua Hou, 2010. "The structure and dynamics of cocitation clusters: A multiple-perspective cocitation analysis," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 61(7), pages 1386-1409, July.
    16. Katherine W. McCain, 1990. "Mapping authors in intellectual space: A technical overview," Journal of the American Society for Information Science, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 41(6), pages 433-443, September.
    17. Howard D. White & Belver C. Griffith, 1981. "Author cocitation: A literature measure of intellectual structure," Journal of the American Society for Information Science, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 32(3), pages 163-171, May.
    18. Leydesdorff, Loet & Bornmann, Lutz & Marx, Werner & Milojević, Staša, 2014. "Referenced Publication Years Spectroscopy applied to iMetrics: Scientometrics, Journal of Informetrics, and a relevant subset of JASIST," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 8(1), pages 162-174.
    19. Thor, Andreas & Marx, Werner & Leydesdorff, Loet & Bornmann, Lutz, 2016. "Introducing CitedReferencesExplorer (CRExplorer): A program for reference publication year spectroscopy with cited references standardization," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 10(2), pages 503-515.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Xin Li & Qiang Yao & Xuli Tang & Qian Li & Mengjia Wu, 2020. "How to investigate the historical roots and evolution of research fields in China? A case study on iMetrics using RootCite," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 125(2), pages 1253-1274, November.
    2. Dirk Tunger & Marc Eulerich, 2018. "Bibliometric analysis of corporate governance research in German-speaking countries: applying bibliometrics to business research using a custom-made database," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 117(3), pages 2041-2059, December.
    3. Lutz Bornmann & Loet Leydesdorff, 2020. "Historical roots of Judit Bar-Ilan’s research: a cited-references analysis using CRExplorer," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 123(3), pages 1193-1200, June.
    4. Lutz Bornmann & Robin Haunschild & Loet Leydesdorff, 2018. "Reference publication year spectroscopy (RPYS) of Eugene Garfield’s publications," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 114(2), pages 439-448, February.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. McLevey, John & McIlroy-Young, Reid, 2017. "Introducing metaknowledge: Software for computational research in information science, network analysis, and science of science," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 11(1), pages 176-197.
    2. Andreas Thor & Lutz Bornmann & Werner Marx & Rüdiger Mutz, 2018. "Identifying single influential publications in a research field: new analysis opportunities of the CRExplorer," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 116(1), pages 591-608, July.
    3. Xin Li & Qiang Yao & Xuli Tang & Qian Li & Mengjia Wu, 2020. "How to investigate the historical roots and evolution of research fields in China? A case study on iMetrics using RootCite," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 125(2), pages 1253-1274, November.
    4. Pin Li & Guoli Yang & Chuanqi Wang, 2019. "Visual topical analysis of library and information science," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 121(3), pages 1753-1791, December.
    5. Werner Marx & Lutz Bornmann, 2016. "Change of perspective: bibliometrics from the point of view of cited references—a literature overview on approaches to the evaluation of cited references in bibliometrics," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 109(2), pages 1397-1415, November.
    6. Comins, Jordan A. & Carmack, Stephanie A. & Leydesdorff, Loet, 2018. "Patent citation spectroscopy (PCS): Online retrieval of landmark patents based on an algorithmic approach," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 12(4), pages 1223-1231.
    7. Thor, Andreas & Marx, Werner & Leydesdorff, Loet & Bornmann, Lutz, 2016. "Introducing CitedReferencesExplorer (CRExplorer): A program for reference publication year spectroscopy with cited references standardization," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 10(2), pages 503-515.
    8. Ying Huang & Wolfgang Glänzel & Lin Zhang, 2021. "Tracing the development of mapping knowledge domains," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(7), pages 6201-6224, July.
    9. Werner Marx & Robin Haunschild & Andreas Thor & Lutz Bornmann, 2017. "Which early works are cited most frequently in climate change research literature? A bibliometric approach based on Reference Publication Year Spectroscopy," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 110(1), pages 335-353, January.
    10. Seyedghorban, Zahra & Matanda, Margaret Jekanyika & LaPlaca, Peter, 2016. "Advancing theory and knowledge in the business-to-business branding literature," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 69(8), pages 2664-2677.
    11. Jianhua Hou & Xiucai Yang & Chaomei Chen, 2020. "Measuring researchers’ potential scholarly impact with structural variations: Four types of researchers in information science (1979–2018)," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(6), pages 1-26, June.
    12. Jianhua Hou & Xiucai Yang & Yang Zhang, 2023. "The effect of social media knowledge cascade: an analysis of scientific papers diffusion," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 128(9), pages 5169-5195, September.
    13. Masaki Eto, 2013. "Evaluations of context-based co-citation searching," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 94(2), pages 651-673, February.
    14. Bruno Miranda Henrique & Vinicius Amorim Sobreiro & Herbert Kimura, 2018. "Building direct citation networks," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 115(2), pages 817-832, May.
    15. Werner Marx & Robin Haunschild & Bernie French & Lutz Bornmann, 2017. "Slow reception and under-citedness in climate change research: A case study of Charles David Keeling, discoverer of the risk of global warming," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 112(2), pages 1079-1092, August.
    16. Ma, Chao-Qun & Lei, Yu-Tian & Ren, Yi-Shuai & Chen, Xun-Qi & Wang, Yi-Ran & Narayan, Seema, 2024. "Systematic analysis of the blockchain in the energy sector: Trends, issues, and future directions," Telecommunications Policy, Elsevier, vol. 48(2).
    17. Boyack, Kevin W. & Klavans, Richard, 2014. "Including cited non-source items in a large-scale map of science: What difference does it make?," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 8(3), pages 569-580.
    18. K. Brad Wray & Lutz Bornmann, 2015. "Philosophy of science viewed through the lense of “Referenced Publication Years Spectroscopy” (RPYS)," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 102(3), pages 1987-1996, March.
    19. Koseoglu, Mehmet Ali & Rahimi, Roya & Okumus, Fevzi & Liu, Jingyan, 2016. "Bibliometric studies in tourism," Annals of Tourism Research, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 180-198.
    20. Maximilian Scheffler & Johannes Brunzel, 2020. "Destructive leadership in organizational research: a bibliometric approach," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 125(1), pages 755-775, October.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:scient:v:110:y:2017:i:3:d:10.1007_s11192-016-2206-9. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.