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Understanding the impact change of a highly cited article: a content-based citation analysis

Author

Listed:
  • Chao Lu

    (Nanjing University of Science and Technology
    Indiana University Bloomington)

  • Ying Ding

    (Indiana University Bloomington
    Wuhan University
    Tongji University)

  • Chengzhi Zhang

    (Nanjing University of Science and Technology
    Nanjing University
    Jiangsu Collaborative Innovation Center of Social Safety Science and Technology)

Abstract

Researchers tend to cite highly cited articles, but how these highly cited articles influence the citing articles has been underexplored. This paper investigates how one highly cited essay, Hirsch’s “h-index” article (H-article) published in 2005, has been cited by other articles. Content-based citation analysis is applied to trace the dynamics of the article’s impact changes from 2006 to 2014. The findings confirm that citation context captures the changing impact of the H-article over time in several ways. In the first two years, average citation mention of H-article increased, yet continued to decline with fluctuation until 2014. In contrast with citation mention, average citation count stayed the same. The distribution of citation location over time also indicates three phases of the H-article “Discussion,” “Reputation,” and “Adoption” we propose in this study. Based on their locations in the citing articles and their roles in different periods, topics of citation context shifted gradually when an increasing number of other articles were co-mentioned with the H-article in the same sentences. These outcomes show that the impact of the H-article manifests in various ways within the content of these citing articles that continued to shift in nine years, data that is not captured by traditional means of citation analysis that do not weigh citation impacts over time.

Suggested Citation

  • Chao Lu & Ying Ding & Chengzhi Zhang, 2017. "Understanding the impact change of a highly cited article: a content-based citation analysis," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 112(2), pages 927-945, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:scient:v:112:y:2017:i:2:d:10.1007_s11192-017-2398-7
    DOI: 10.1007/s11192-017-2398-7
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Citing behavior; Content-based citation analysis; Citation context; Impact decay;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D83 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness

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