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Citation frequency: A biased measure of research impact significantly influenced by the geographical origin of research articles

Author

Listed:
  • Gerard Pasterkamp

    (Experimental Cardiology Laboratory)

  • Joris I. Rotmans

    (Experimental Cardiology Laboratory)

  • Dominique V. P. Kleijn

    (Experimental Cardiology Laboratory)

  • Cornelius Borst

    (Experimental Cardiology Laboratory)

Abstract

Context. The use of citation frequency and impact factor as measures of research quality and journal prestige is being criticized. Citation frequency is augmented by self-citation and for most journals the majority of citations originate from a minority of papers. We hypothesized that citation frequency is also associated with the geographical origin of the research publication. Objective. We determined whether citations originate more frequently from institutes that are located in the same country as the authors of the cited publication than would be expected by chance. Design. We screened citations referring to 1200 cardiovascular publications in the 7 years following their publication. For the 1200 citation recipient publications we documented the country where the research originated (9 countries/regions) and the total number of received citations. For a selection of 8864 citation donor papers we registered the country/region where the citing paper originated. Results. Self-citation was common in cardiovascular journals (n = 1534, 17.8%). After exclusion of self-citation, however, the number of citations that originated from the same country as the author of the citation recipient was found to be on average 31.6% higher than would be expected by chance (p

Suggested Citation

  • Gerard Pasterkamp & Joris I. Rotmans & Dominique V. P. Kleijn & Cornelius Borst, 2007. "Citation frequency: A biased measure of research impact significantly influenced by the geographical origin of research articles," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 70(1), pages 153-165, January.
  • Handle: RePEc:spr:scient:v:70:y:2007:i:1:d:10.1007_s11192-007-0109-5
    DOI: 10.1007/s11192-007-0109-5
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    1. Thed N. van Leeuwen & Henk F. Moed, 2005. "Characteristics of journal impact factors: The effects of uncitedness and citation distribution on the understanding of journal impact factors," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 63(2), pages 357-371, April.
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    Cited by:

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    5. Christina H. Drew & Kristianna G. Pettibone & Fallis Owen Finch & Douglas Giles & Paul Jordan, 2016. "Automated Research Impact Assessment: a new bibliometrics approach," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 106(3), pages 987-1005, March.
    6. Liu, Qiuling & Guo, Lei & Sun, Yiping & Ren, Linlin & Wang, Xinhua & Han, Xiaohui, 2024. "Do scholars' collaborative tendencies impact the quality of their publications? A generalized propensity score matching analysis," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 18(1).
    7. Paul F. Skilton, 2009. "Does the human capital of teams of natural science authors predict citation frequency?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 78(3), pages 525-542, March.
    8. Koen Frenken & Roderik Ponds & Frank Van Oort, 2010. "The citation impact of research collaboration in science‐based industries: A spatial‐institutional analysis," Papers in Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 89(2), pages 351-271, June.
    9. 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.
    10. Nomaler, Önder & Frenken, Koen & Heimeriks, Gaston, 2013. "Do more distant collaborations have more citation impact?," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 7(4), pages 966-971.
    11. John N. Parker & Christopher Lortie & Stefano Allesina, 2010. "Characterizing a scientific elite: the social characteristics of the most highly cited scientists in environmental science and ecology," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 85(1), pages 129-143, October.
    12. Vicenç Hernández-González & Josep Maria Carné-Torrent & Carme Jové-Deltell & Álvaro Pano-Rodríguez & Joaquin Reverter-Masia, 2022. "The Top 100 Most Cited Scientific Papers in the Public, Environmental & Occupational Health Category of Web of Science: A Bibliometric and Visualized Analysis," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(15), pages 1-24, August.
    13. Blaise Cronin, 2012. "Language matters," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 63(2), pages 217-217, February.
    14. André Andrian Padial & João Carlos Nabout & Tadeu Siqueira & Luis Mauricio Bini & José Alexandre Felizola Diniz-Filho, 2010. "Weak evidence for determinants of citation frequency in ecological articles," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 85(1), pages 1-12, October.
    15. Thomas Gurney & Edwin Horlings & Peter van den Besselaar, 2012. "Author disambiguation using multi-aspect similarity indicators," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 91(2), pages 435-449, May.
    16. Cong Cao & Tianlan Wei & Shengyuan Xu & Fan Su & Haiquan Fang, 2023. "Comprehensive evaluation of higher education systems using indicators: PCA and EWM methods," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 10(1), pages 1-12, December.
    17. Guetz, Bernhard & Bidmon, Sonja, 2023. "The Credibility of Physician Rating Websites: A Systematic Literature Review," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 132(C).
    18. Michael S. Patterson & Simon Harris, 2009. "The relationship between reviewers’ quality-scores and number of citations for papers published in the journal Physics in Medicine and Biology from 2003–2005," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 80(2), pages 343-349, August.
    19. 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).
    20. Saeideh Ebrahimy & Farideh Osareh, 2014. "Design, validation, and reliability determination a citing conformity instrument at three levels: normative, informational, and identification," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 99(2), pages 581-597, May.
    21. Danielle H. Lee, 2019. "Predicting the research performance of early career scientists," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 121(3), pages 1481-1504, December.

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