IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/scient/v127y2022i7d10.1007_s11192-022-04444-0.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Do cover papers get better citations and usage counts? An analysis of 42 journals in cell biology

Author

Listed:
  • Yezhu Wang

    (University of Science and Technology of China)

  • Yundong Xie

    (University of Science and Technology of China)

  • Dong Wang

    (University of Science and Technology of China)

  • Lu Guo

    (University of Science and Technology of China
    Hefei Normal University)

  • Rongting Zhou

    (University of Science and Technology of China)

Abstract

Research on the impact of and attention given to journal covers is a crucial research topic in academia. This study investigated whether a paper featured on the cover of a journal receives more citations and higher usage than non-cover papers. Unlike previous studies that focused on just a few prestigious journals, we analyzed the citations and usage counts of 3196 cover and 36,652 non-cover papers published in 42 cell biology journals from 2011 to 2015. To address the above question, four new indicators were used to compare descriptive differences in stratified sets, and both linear regression model analysis and robustness testing were applied to further explore the relationships. Our main results showed that being a cover paper has positive and significant relationships both with citations and usage counts. Moreover, additional analyses show that the two relationships are strengthened in top-tier journals, and the main effects remain robust when we consider the influence of author ability. This new exploration of factors relevant for citations and usage counts in this empirical analysis consolidates and broadens the findings of previous studies.

Suggested Citation

  • Yezhu Wang & Yundong Xie & Dong Wang & Lu Guo & Rongting Zhou, 2022. "Do cover papers get better citations and usage counts? An analysis of 42 journals in cell biology," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(7), pages 3793-3813, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:scient:v:127:y:2022:i:7:d:10.1007_s11192-022-04444-0
    DOI: 10.1007/s11192-022-04444-0
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11192-022-04444-0
    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/s11192-022-04444-0?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. Glenn Ellison, 2013. "How Does the Market Use Citation Data? The Hirsch Index in Economics," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 5(3), pages 63-90, July.
    2. Battiston, Pietro & Sacco, Pier Luigi & Stanca, Luca, 2022. "Cover effects on citations uncovered: Evidence from Nature," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 16(2).
    3. Tom Coupé & Victor Ginsburgh & Abdul Noury, 2010. "Are leading papers of better quality? Evidence from a natural experiment," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 62(1), pages 1-11, January.
    4. Nabil Amara & Réjean Landry & Norrin Halilem, 2015. "What can university administrators do to increase the publication and citation scores of their faculty members?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 103(2), pages 489-530, May.
    5. Bornmann, Lutz & Leydesdorff, Loet & Wang, Jian, 2014. "How to improve the prediction based on citation impact percentiles for years shortly after the publication date?," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 8(1), pages 175-180.
    6. Rüdiger Mutz & Tobias Wolbring & Hans-Dieter Daniel, 2017. "The effect of the “very important paper” (VIP) designation in Angewandte Chemie International Edition on citation impact: A propensity score matching analysis," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 68(9), pages 2139-2153, September.
    7. Tai-Quan Peng & Jonathan J.H. Zhu, 2012. "Where you publish matters most: A multilevel analysis of factors affecting citations of internet studies," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 63(9), pages 1789-1803, September.
    8. Hamid R. Jamali & Mahsa Nikzad, 2011. "Article title type and its relation with the number of downloads and citations," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 88(2), pages 653-661, August.
    9. Bikun Chen, 2018. "Usage pattern comparison of the same scholarly articles between Web of Science (WoS) and Springer," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 115(1), pages 519-537, April.
    10. Pei-Shan Chi & Wolfgang Glänzel, 2017. "An empirical investigation of the associations among usage, scientific collaboration and citation impact," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 112(1), pages 403-412, July.
    11. Weihua Li & Tomaso Aste & Fabio Caccioli & Giacomo Livan, 2019. "Early coauthorship with top scientists predicts success in academic careers," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 10(1), pages 1-9, December.
    12. Lakshmi Balachandran Nair & Michael Gibbert, 2016. "What makes a ‘good’ title and (how) does it matter for citations? A review and general model of article title attributes in management science," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 107(3), pages 1331-1359, June.
    13. Maureen McKelvey & Bastian Rake, 2016. "Product innovation success based on cancer research in the pharmaceutical industry: co-publication networks and the effects of partners," Industry and Innovation, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 23(5), pages 383-406, July.
    14. Ma, Chao & Li, Yiwei & Guo, Feng & Si, Kao, 2019. "The citation trap: Papers published at year-end receive systematically fewer citations," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 166(C), pages 667-687.
    15. Matthias Gnewuch & Klaus Wohlrabe, 2017. "Title characteristics and citations in economics," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 110(3), pages 1573-1578, March.
    16. Fereshteh Didegah & Mike Thelwall, 2013. "Determinants of research citation impact in nanoscience and nanotechnology," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 64(5), pages 1055-1064, May.
    17. Star X. Zhao & Wen Lou & Alice M. Tan & Shuang Yu, 2018. "Do funded papers attract more usage?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 115(1), pages 153-168, April.
    18. Estelle Dumas-Mallet & André Garenne & Thomas Boraud & François Gonon, 2020. "Does newspapers coverage influence the citations count of scientific publications? An analysis of biomedical studies," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 123(1), pages 413-427, April.
    19. Yundong Xie & Qiang Wu & Xingchen Li, 2019. "Editorial team scholarly index (ETSI): an alternative indicator for evaluating academic journal reputation," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 120(3), pages 1333-1349, September.
    20. Vieira, E.S. & Gomes, J.A.N.F., 2010. "Citations to scientific articles: Its distribution and dependence on the article features," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 4(1), pages 1-13.
    21. Wei Huang, 2015. "DO ABCs GET MORE CITATIONS THAN XYZs?," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 53(1), pages 773-789, January.
    22. Wolfgang Glänzel & Juan Gorraiz, 2015. "Usage metrics versus altmetrics: confusing terminology?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 102(3), pages 2161-2164, March.
    23. Christian Schlögl & Juan Gorraiz & Christian Gumpenberger & Kris Jack & Peter Kraker, 2014. "Comparison of downloads, citations and readership data for two information systems journals," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 101(2), pages 1113-1128, November.
    24. William H. Starbuck, 2005. "How Much Better Are the Most-Prestigious Journals? The Statistics of Academic Publication," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 16(2), pages 180-200, April.
    25. Ciriaco Andrea D’Angelo & Nees Jan Eck, 2020. "Collecting large-scale publication data at the level of individual researchers: a practical proposal for author name disambiguation," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 123(2), pages 883-907, May.
    26. Jonathan M. Levitt & Mike Thelwall, 2010. "Does the higher citation of collaborative research differ from region to region? A case study of Economics," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 85(1), pages 171-183, October.
    27. Kong, Ling & Wang, Dongbo, 2020. "Comparison of citations and attention of cover and non-cover papers," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 14(4).
    28. Dangzhi Zhao & Andreas Strotmann, 2011. "Counting first, last, or all authors in citation analysis: A comprehensive comparison in the highly collaborative stem cell research field," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 62(4), pages 654-676, April.
    29. Maria Cláudia Cabrini Grácio & Ely Francina Tannuri Oliveira & Zaida Chinchilla-Rodríguez & Henk F. Moed, 2020. "Does corresponding authorship influence scientific impact in collaboration: Brazilian institutions as a case of study," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 125(2), pages 1349-1369, November.
    30. Steffen Lemke & Max Brede & Sophie Rotgeri & Isabella Peters, 2022. "Research articles promoted in embargo e-mails receive higher citations and altmetrics," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(1), pages 75-97, January.
    31. Tai‐Quan Peng & Jonathan J.H. Zhu, 2012. "Where you publish matters most: A multilevel analysis of factors affecting citations of internet studies," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 63(9), pages 1789-1803, September.
    32. Lawrence D. Fu & Constantin F. Aliferis, 2010. "Using content-based and bibliometric features for machine learning models to predict citation counts in the biomedical literature," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 85(1), pages 257-270, October.
    33. Fereshteh Didegah & Mike Thelwall, 2013. "Determinants of research citation impact in nanoscience and nanotechnology," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 64(5), pages 1055-1064, May.
    34. Yassine Gargouri & Chawki Hajjem & Vincent Larivière & Yves Gingras & Les Carr & Tim Brody & Stevan Harnad, 2010. "Self-Selected or Mandated, Open Access Increases Citation Impact for Higher Quality Research," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 5(10), pages 1-12, October.
    35. Dangzhi Zhao & Andreas Strotmann, 2011. "Counting first, last, or all authors in citation analysis: A comprehensive comparison in the highly collaborative stem cell research field," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 62(4), pages 654-676, April.
    36. Xianwen Wang & Zhichao Fang & Xiaoling Sun, 2016. "Usage patterns of scholarly articles on Web of Science: a study on Web of Science usage count," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 109(2), pages 917-926, November.
    37. Waltman, Ludo, 2016. "A review of the literature on citation impact indicators," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 10(2), pages 365-391.
    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. Xie, Yundong & Wu, Qiang & Wang, Yezhu & Hou, Li & Liu, Yuanyuan, 2024. "Does the handling time of scientific papers relate to their academic impact and social attention? Evidence from Nature, Science, and PNAS," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 18(2).
    2. Evelyn Eika & Frode Eika Sandnes, 2022. "Starstruck by journal prestige and citation counts? On students’ bias and perceptions of trustworthiness according to clues in publication references," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(11), pages 6363-6390, November.

    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. Martorell Cunil, Onofre & Otero González, Luis & Durán Santomil, Pablo & Mulet Forteza, Carlos, 2023. "How to accomplish a highly cited paper in the tourism, leisure and hospitality field," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 157(C).
    2. Iman Tahamtan & Askar Safipour Afshar & Khadijeh Ahamdzadeh, 2016. "Factors affecting number of citations: a comprehensive review of the literature," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 107(3), pages 1195-1225, June.
    3. Elizabeth S. Vieira, 2023. "The influence of research collaboration on citation impact: the countries in the European Innovation Scoreboard," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 128(6), pages 3555-3579, June.
    4. Hou, Li & Wu, Qiang & Xie, Yundong, 2024. "Does open identity of peer reviewers positively relate to citations?," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 18(1).
    5. Feng Guo & Chao Ma & Qingling Shi & Qingqing Zong, 2018. "Succinct effect or informative effect: the relationship between title length and the number of citations," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 116(3), pages 1531-1539, September.
    6. Fan, Lingxu & Guo, Lei & Wang, Xinhua & Xu, Liancheng & Liu, Fangai, 2022. "Does the author’s collaboration mode lead to papers’ different citation impacts? An empirical analysis based on propensity score matching," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 16(4).
    7. Bikun Chen & Dannan Deng & Zhouyan Zhong & Chengzhi Zhang, 2020. "Exploring linguistic characteristics of highly browsed and downloaded academic articles," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 122(3), pages 1769-1790, March.
    8. Xie, Yundong & Wu, Qiang & Wang, Yezhu & Hou, Li & Liu, Yuanyuan, 2024. "Does the handling time of scientific papers relate to their academic impact and social attention? Evidence from Nature, Science, and PNAS," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 18(2).
    9. Ajiferuke, Isola & Famoye, Felix, 2015. "Modelling count response variables in informetric studies: Comparison among count, linear, and lognormal regression models," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 9(3), pages 499-513.
    10. Kong, Ling & Wang, Dongbo, 2020. "Comparison of citations and attention of cover and non-cover papers," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 14(4).
    11. Mingyang Wang & Zhenyu Wang & Guangsheng Chen, 2019. "Which can better predict the future success of articles? Bibliometric indices or alternative metrics," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 119(3), pages 1575-1595, June.
    12. Basma Albanna & Julia Handl & Richard Heeks, 2021. "Publication outperformance among global South researchers: An analysis of individual-level and publication-level predictors of positive deviance," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(10), pages 8375-8431, October.
    13. Liu, Jialin & Chen, Hongkan & Liu, Zhibo & Bu, Yi & Gu, Weiye, 2022. "Non-linearity between referencing behavior and citation impact: A large-scale, discipline-level analysis," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 16(3).
    14. Kaile Gong & Juan Xie & Ying Cheng & Vincent Larivière & Cassidy R. Sugimoto, 2019. "The citation advantage of foreign language references for Chinese social science papers," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 120(3), pages 1439-1460, September.
    15. Tahamtan, Iman & Bornmann, Lutz, 2018. "Core elements in the process of citing publications: Conceptual overview of the literature," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 12(1), pages 203-216.
    16. Ruan, Xuanmin & Zhu, Yuanyang & Li, Jiang & Cheng, Ying, 2020. "Predicting the citation counts of individual papers via a BP neural network," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 14(3).
    17. Brady D. Lund & Sanjay Kumar Maurya, 2020. "The relationship between highly-cited papers and the frequency of citations to other papers within-issue among three top information science journals," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 125(3), pages 2491-2504, December.
    18. Ke, Qing, 2020. "The citation disadvantage of clinical research," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 14(1).
    19. ↓Xia Peng & Zequan Xiong & Li Yang, 2024. "Can document characteristics affect motivations for literature usage?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 129(6), pages 3543-3563, June.
    20. Reingewertz, Yaniv & Lutmar, Carmela, 2018. "Academic in-group bias: An empirical examination of the link between author and journal affiliation," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 12(1), pages 74-86.

    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:127:y:2022:i:7:d:10.1007_s11192-022-04444-0. 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.