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A relevance ranking method for citation-based search results

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  • Christopher W. Belter

    (National Institutes of Health)

Abstract

A growing number of researchers are exploring the use of citation relationships such as direct citation, bibliographic coupling, and co-citation for information retrieval in scientific databases and digital libraries. In this paper, I propose a method of ranking the relevance of citation-based search results to a set of key, or seed, papers by measuring the number of citation relationships they share with those key papers. I tested the method against 23 published systematic reviews and found that the method retrieved 87% of the studies included in these reviews. The relevance ranking approach identified a subset of the citation search results that comprised 27% of the total documents retrieved by the method, and 7% of the documents retrieved by these reviews, but that contained 75% of the studies included in these reviews. Additional testing suggested that the method may be less appropriate for reviews that combine literature in ways that are not reflected in the literature itself. These results suggest that this ranking method could be useful in a range of information retrieval contexts.

Suggested Citation

  • Christopher W. Belter, 2017. "A relevance ranking method for citation-based search results," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 112(2), pages 731-746, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:scient:v:112:y:2017:i:2:d:10.1007_s11192-017-2406-y
    DOI: 10.1007/s11192-017-2406-y
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Philipp Mayr & Andrea Scharnhorst, 2015. "Scientometrics and information retrieval: weak-links revitalized," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 102(3), pages 2193-2199, March.
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    4. Christopher W. Belter, 2016. "Citation analysis as a literature search method for systematic reviews," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 67(11), pages 2766-2777, November.
    5. Miranda Lee Pao & Dennis B. Worthen, 1989. "Retrieval effectiveness by semantic and citation searching," Journal of the American Society for Information Science, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 40(4), pages 226-235, July.
    6. Sebastian Hinde & Eldon Spackman, 2015. "Bidirectional Citation Searching to Completion: An Exploration of Literature Searching Methods," PharmacoEconomics, Springer, vol. 33(1), pages 5-11, January.
    7. Masaki Eto, 2013. "Evaluations of context-based co-citation searching," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 94(2), pages 651-673, February.
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