IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/scient/v91y2012i2d10.1007_s11192-011-0575-7.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The proximity of co-citation

Author

Listed:
  • Shengbo Liu

    (Dalian University of Technology)

  • Chaomei Chen

    (Drexel University)

Abstract

Traditional co-citation analysis has not taken the proximity of co-cited references into account. As long as two references are cited by the same article, they are retreated equally regardless the distance between where citations appear in the article. Little is known about what additional insights into citation and co-citation behaviours one might gain from studying distributions of co-citation in terms of such proximity. How are citations distributed in an article? What insights does the proximity of co-citation provide? In this article, the proximity of a pair of co-cited reference is defined as the nearest instance of the co-citation relation in text. We investigate the proximity of co-citation in full text of scientific publications at four levels, namely, the sentence level, the paragraph level, the section level, and the article level. We conducted four studies of co-citation patterns in the full text of articles published in 22 open access journals from BioMed Central. First, we compared the distributions of co-citation instances at four proximity levels in journal articles to the traditional article-level co-citation counts. Second, we studied the distributions of co-citations of various proximities across organizational sections in articles. Third, the distribution of co-citation proximity in different co-citation frequency groups is investigated. Fourth, we identified the occurrences of co-citations at different proximity levels with reference to the corresponding traditional co-citation network. The results show that (1) the majority of co-citations are loosely coupled at the article level, (2) a higher proportion of sentence-level co-citations is found in high co-citation frequencies than in low co-citation frequencies, (3) tightly coupled sentence-level co-citations not only preserve the essential structure of the corresponding traditional co-citation network but also form a much smaller subset of the entire co-citation instances typically considered by traditional co-citation analysis. Implications for improving our understanding of underlying factors concerning co-citations and developing more efficient co-citation analysis methods are discussed.

Suggested Citation

  • Shengbo Liu & Chaomei Chen, 2012. "The proximity of co-citation," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 91(2), pages 495-511, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:scient:v:91:y:2012:i:2:d:10.1007_s11192-011-0575-7
    DOI: 10.1007/s11192-011-0575-7
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11192-011-0575-7
    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/s11192-011-0575-7?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. Alison Callahan & Stephen Hockema & Gunther Eysenbach, 2010. "Contextual cocitation: Augmenting cocitation analysis and its applications," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 61(6), pages 1130-1143, June.
    2. 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.
    3. 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.
    4. Aaron Elkiss & Siwei Shen & Anthony Fader & Güneş Erkan & David States & Dragomir Radev, 2008. "Blind men and elephants: What do citation summaries tell us about a research article?," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 59(1), pages 51-62, January.
    5. Alison Callahan & Stephen Hockema & Gunther Eysenbach, 2010. "Contextual cocitation: Augmenting cocitation analysis and its applications," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 61(6), pages 1130-1143, June.
    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. Shengbo Liu & Chaomei Chen & Kun Ding & Bo Wang & Kan Xu & Yuan Lin, 2014. "Literature retrieval based on citation context," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 101(2), pages 1293-1307, November.
    2. Xingwen Chen & Li Zhu & Chao Liu & Chunhua Chen & Jun Liu & Dongxia Huo, 2023. "Workplace Diversity in the Asia-Pacific Region: A Review of Literature and Directions for Future Research," Asia Pacific Journal of Management, Springer, vol. 40(3), pages 1021-1045, September.
    3. Hua Li & Weijun Wang, 2022. "Knowledge Domain and Emerging Trends of Social Vulnerability Research: A Bibliometric Analysis (1991–2021)," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(14), pages 1-15, July.
    4. Kamal Sanguri & Atanu Bhuyan & Sabyasachi Patra, 2020. "A semantic similarity adjusted document co-citation analysis: a case of tourism supply chain," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 125(1), pages 233-269, October.
    5. Moshe Blidstein & Maayan Zhitomirsky-Geffet, 2022. "Towards a new generic framework for citation network generation and analysis in the humanities," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(7), pages 4275-4297, July.
    6. Annarelli, Alessandro & Battistella, Cinzia & Nonino, Fabio & Parida, Vinit & Pessot, Elena, 2021. "Literature review on digitalization capabilities: Co-citation analysis of antecedents, conceptualization and consequences," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 166(C).
    7. Marc Bertin & Iana Atanassova & Cassidy R. Sugimoto & Vincent Lariviere, 2016. "The linguistic patterns and rhetorical structure of citation context: an approach using n-grams," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 109(3), pages 1417-1434, December.
    8. Dangzhi Zhao & Andreas Strotmann, 2020. "Telescopic and panoramic views of library and information science research 2011–2018: a comparison of four weighting schemes for author co-citation analysis," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 124(1), pages 255-270, July.
    9. Jun Gao & Muhammad Faheem & Xiang Yu, 2022. "Global Research on Contaminated Soil Remediation: A Bibliometric Network Analysis," Land, MDPI, vol. 11(9), pages 1-16, September.
    10. Raja Habib & Muhammad Tanvir Afzal, 2019. "Sections-based bibliographic coupling for research paper recommendation," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 119(2), pages 643-656, May.
    11. Lijun Yang & Liangxiu Han & Naxin Liu, 2019. "A new approach to journal co-citation matrix construction based on the number of co-cited articles in journals," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 120(2), pages 507-517, August.
    12. 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.
    13. Kim, Ha Jin & Jeong, Yoo Kyung & Song, Min, 2016. "Content- and proximity-based author co-citation analysis using citation sentences," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 10(4), pages 954-966.
    14. Boutheina Fhoula & Majed Hadid & Adel Elomri & Laoucine Kerbache & Anas Hamad & Mohammed Hamad J. Al Thani & Raed M. Al-Zoubi & Abdulla Al-Ansari & Omar M. Aboumarzouk & Abdelfatteh El Omri, 2022. "Home Cancer Care Research: A Bibliometric and Visualization Analysis (1990–2021)," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(20), pages 1-25, October.
    15. Dongxia Huo & Sarana Photchanachan, 2023. "Bibliometric Analysis of Knowledge Networks and Creativity," International Journal of Business and Management, Canadian Center of Science and Education, vol. 16(5), pages 1-35, 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. Masaki Eto, 2013. "Evaluations of context-based co-citation searching," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 94(2), pages 651-673, February.
    2. Kim, Ha Jin & Jeong, Yoo Kyung & Song, Min, 2016. "Content- and proximity-based author co-citation analysis using citation sentences," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 10(4), pages 954-966.
    3. Michel Zitt, 2015. "Meso-level retrieval: IR-bibliometrics interplay and hybrid citation-words methods in scientific fields delineation," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 102(3), pages 2223-2245, March.
    4. Annarelli, Alessandro & Battistella, Cinzia & Nonino, Fabio & Parida, Vinit & Pessot, Elena, 2021. "Literature review on digitalization capabilities: Co-citation analysis of antecedents, conceptualization and consequences," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 166(C).
    5. Shengbo Liu & Chaomei Chen & Kun Ding & Bo Wang & Kan Xu & Yuan Lin, 2014. "Literature retrieval based on citation context," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 101(2), pages 1293-1307, November.
    6. Maryam Yaghtin & Hajar Sotudeh & Mahdieh Mirzabeigi & Seyed Mostafa Fakhrahmad & Mehdi Mohammadi, 2019. "In quest of new document relations: evaluating co-opinion relations between co-citations and its impact on Information retrieval effectiveness," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 119(2), pages 987-1008, May.
    7. Raja Habib & Muhammad Tanvir Afzal, 2019. "Sections-based bibliographic coupling for research paper recommendation," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 119(2), pages 643-656, May.
    8. Jeong, Yoo Kyung & Song, Min & Ding, Ying, 2014. "Content-based author co-citation analysis," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 8(1), pages 197-211.
    9. Dangzhi Zhao & Andreas Strotmann, 2020. "Telescopic and panoramic views of library and information science research 2011–2018: a comparison of four weighting schemes for author co-citation analysis," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 124(1), pages 255-270, July.
    10. Marc Bertin & Iana Atanassova & Cassidy R. Sugimoto & Vincent Lariviere, 2016. "The linguistic patterns and rhetorical structure of citation context: an approach using n-grams," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 109(3), pages 1417-1434, December.
    11. Moshe Blidstein & Maayan Zhitomirsky-Geffet, 2022. "Towards a new generic framework for citation network generation and analysis in the humanities," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(7), pages 4275-4297, July.
    12. Gaviria-Marin, Magaly & Merigó, José M. & Baier-Fuentes, Hugo, 2019. "Knowledge management: A global examination based on bibliometric analysis," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 140(C), pages 194-220.
    13. Serhat Burmaoglu & Ozcan Saritas, 2019. "An evolutionary analysis of the innovation policy domain: Is there a paradigm shift?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 118(3), pages 823-847, March.
    14. Rey-Long Liu, 2017. "A new bibliographic coupling measure with descriptive capability," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 110(2), pages 915-935, February.
    15. Yi-Ming Wei & Jin-Wei Wang & Tianqi Chen & Bi-Ying Yu & Hua Liao, 2018. "Frontiers of Low-Carbon Technologies: Results from Bibliographic Coupling with Sliding Window," CEEP-BIT Working Papers 116, Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research (CEEP), Beijing Institute of Technology.
    16. Souzanchi Kashani, Ebrahim & Roshani, Saeed, 2019. "Evolution of innovation system literature: Intellectual bases and emerging trends," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 146(C), pages 68-80.
    17. Zhichao Wang & Valentin Zelenyuk, 2021. "Performance Analysis of Hospitals in Australia and its Peers: A Systematic Review," CEPA Working Papers Series WP012021, School of Economics, University of Queensland, Australia.
    18. 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.
    19. Shuo Xu & Liyuan Hao & Xin An & Hongshen Pang & Ting Li, 2020. "Review on emerging research topics with key-route main path analysis," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 122(1), pages 607-624, January.
    20. Jiaxing Jiang & Lin Fan, 2022. "Visualizing the Knowledge Domain of Language Experience: A Bibliometric Analysis," SAGE Open, , vol. 12(1), pages 21582440211, January.

    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:91:y:2012:i:2:d:10.1007_s11192-011-0575-7. 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.