IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/scient/v92y2012i3d10.1007_s11192-012-0662-4.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Citation behavior in popular scientific papers: what is behind obscure citations? The case of ethnobotany

Author

Listed:
  • Marcelo Alves Ramos

    (Universidade Federal Rural de Pernambuco)

  • Joabe Gomes Melo

    (Universidade Federal Rural de Pernambuco)

  • Ulysses Paulino Albuquerque

    (Universidade Federal Rural de Pernambuco)

Abstract

Citation studies have become an important tool for understanding scientific communication processes, as they enable the identification of several characteristics of information-retrieval behavior. This study seeks to analyze citation behavior using two popular ethnobotany articles, and our analysis is guided by the following question: when an author references a work, is he pointing out the work’s theoretical contribution, or is bias a factor in citing this reference? Citation analysis reveals an interesting phenomenon, as the majority of citing texts do not consider the theoretical contributions made by the articles cited. Two possible conclusions can be drawn from this scenario: (1) citing authors read the original texts that they cite only superficially, and (2) the works cited are not read by the vast majority of people who reference them. Thus, it is clear that even with sufficient access to reference texts; ethnobotanical studies highlight elements less relevant to the research and reproduce discussions in a non-reflective manner.

Suggested Citation

  • Marcelo Alves Ramos & Joabe Gomes Melo & Ulysses Paulino Albuquerque, 2012. "Citation behavior in popular scientific papers: what is behind obscure citations? The case of ethnobotany," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 92(3), pages 711-719, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:scient:v:92:y:2012:i:3:d:10.1007_s11192-012-0662-4
    DOI: 10.1007/s11192-012-0662-4
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11192-012-0662-4
    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/s11192-012-0662-4?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. B. C. Peritz, 1992. "On the objectives of citation analysis: Problems of theory and method," Journal of the American Society for Information Science, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 43(6), pages 448-451, July.
    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. Iman Tahamtan & Lutz Bornmann, 2019. "What do citation counts measure? An updated review of studies on citations in scientific documents published between 2006 and 2018," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 121(3), pages 1635-1684, December.
    2. Maarten Wesel & Sally Wyatt & Jeroen Haaf, 2014. "What a difference a colon makes: how superficial factors influence subsequent citation," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 98(3), pages 1601-1615, March.
    3. Juliana Loureiro Almeida Campos & André Sobral & Josivan Soares Silva & Thiago Antonio Sousa Araújo & Washington Soares Ferreira-Júnior & Flávia Rosa Santoro & Gilney Charll Santos & Ulysses Paulino A, 2016. "Insularity and citation behavior of scientific articles in young fields: the case of ethnobiology," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 109(2), pages 1037-1055, November.
    4. Xiaoyan Jia & Xufei Tan & Yuehong Zhang, 2014. "Replication of the methods section in biosciences papers: is it plagiarism?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 98(1), pages 337-345, January.
    5. Latefa Ali Dardas & Malik Sallam & Amanda Woodward & Nadia Sweis & Narjes Sweis & Faleh A. Sawair, 2023. "Evaluating Research Impact Based on Semantic Scholar Highly Influential Citations, Total Citations, and Altmetric Attention Scores: The Quest for Refined Measures Remains Illusive," Publications, MDPI, vol. 11(1), pages 1-16, January.
    6. Martin Ricker, 2017. "Letter to the Editor: About the quality and impact of scientific articles," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 111(3), pages 1851-1855, June.

    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. Rodriguez, Victor & Janssens, Frizo & Debackere, Koenraad & De Moor, Bart, 2008. "On material transfer agreements and visibility of researchers in biotechnology," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 2(1), pages 89-100.
    2. Chiara Franzoni & Christopher L. Simpkins & Baoli Li & Ashwin Ram, 2010. "Using content analysis to investigate the research paths chosen by scientists over time," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 83(1), pages 321-335, April.
    3. Clyde W. Holsapple & Anita Lee, 1996. "Identifying Tiers of Influence in Artificial Intelligence Research: I," Intelligent Systems in Accounting, Finance and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 5(2), pages 87-99, June.
    4. Mario Calderini & Chiara Franzoni, 2004. "Is academic patenting detrimental to high quality research? An empirical analysis of the relationship between scientific careers and patent applications," KITeS Working Papers 162, KITeS, Centre for Knowledge, Internationalization and Technology Studies, Universita' Bocconi, Milano, Italy, revised Oct 2004.
    5. Collins C Ngwakwe, 2022. "The Relationship between Water/Energy Reduction and Shareholders' Dividend Yield," Oblik i finansi, Institute of Accounting and Finance, issue 3, pages 56-61, September.

    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:92:y:2012:i:3:d:10.1007_s11192-012-0662-4. 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.