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An Academic Great Gatsby Curve - How Much Academic Success Inherited?

An Academic Great Gatsby Curve - How Much Academic Success Inherited?

To what extent does academic success follow success? The dynamics of citation and wealth inequality may be surprisingly similar.

Are Chinese Scientists Inflating Their Influence Through 'biased' Citations?

Are Chinese Scientists Inflating Their Influence Through 'biased' Citations?

Studies show scholars from China tend to cite each other more than researchers from other countries, potentially pumping up their prominence.

How and Why Do the Life Sciences Cite Social Sciences?

How and Why Do the Life Sciences Cite Social Sciences?

Drawing on a bibliometric study, Hongyu Zhou, Lin Zhang and their co-authors explore how and why life sciences researchers cite the social sciences and how this relationship has changed in recent years.

Citation cartels help some mathematicians—and their universities—climb the rankings

Citation cartels help some mathematicians—and their universities—climb the rankings

Widespread citation manipulation has led entire field of math to be excluded from influential list of top researchers

China's Research Evaluation Reform: What Are the Consequences for Global Science?

China's Research Evaluation Reform: What Are the Consequences for Global Science?

China created a research evaluation system based on publications indexed in the SCI and on the Journal Impact Factor, which helped China become the largest contributor to scientific literature and increase the position of its universities in global rankings.

Leading Countries in Global Science Increasingly Receive More Citations Than Other Countries Doing Similar Research

Leading Countries in Global Science Increasingly Receive More Citations Than Other Countries Doing Similar Research

This article studies international citation and text similarity networks across 150 fields and find that some countries increasingly receive more citations despite researching similar topics as others.

How Status of Research Papers Affects the Way They Are Read and Cited

How Status of Research Papers Affects the Way They Are Read and Cited

Although citations are widely used to measure the influence of scientific works, research shows that many citations serve rhetorical functions and reflect little-to-no influence on the citing authors.

The Explanatory Power of Citations: a New Approach to Unpacking Impact in Science - Scientometrics

The Explanatory Power of Citations: a New Approach to Unpacking Impact in Science - Scientometrics

This article proposes a text clustering approach to derive contextual aspects of individual citations and the relationship between cited and citing work in an automated and scalable fashion. The method reveals a focal publication's absorption and use within the scientific community. It can also facilitate impact assessments at all levels. 

Data Citation: Let's Choose Adoption Over Perfection

Data Citation: Let's Choose Adoption Over Perfection

This perspective piece on the perceived barriers and ways forward to advance data citation practices was written by members of the Make Data Count team which is funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. 

Are You Confused by Scientific Jargon? So Are Scientists

Are You Confused by Scientific Jargon? So Are Scientists

Scientific papers containing lots of specialized terminology are less likely to be cited by other researchers.

Large-scale Comparison of Bibliographic Data Sources: Scopus, Web of Science, Dimensions, Crossref, and Microsoft Academic

Large-scale Comparison of Bibliographic Data Sources: Scopus, Web of Science, Dimensions, Crossref, and Microsoft Academic

We present a large-scale comparison of five multidisciplinary bibliographic data sources: Scopus, Web of Science, Dimensions, Crossref, and Microsoft Academic. The comparison considers scientific documents from the period 2008-2017 covered by these data sources. Scopus is compared in a pairwise manner with each of the other data sources. We first analyze differences between the data sources in the coverage of documents, focusing for instance on differences over time, differences per document type, and differences per discipline. We then study differences in the completeness and accuracy of citation links. Based on our analysis, we discuss strengths and weaknesses of the different data sources. We emphasize the importance of combining a comprehensive coverage of the scientific literature with a flexible set of filters for making selections of the literature.

Cite Yourself Excessively, Apologize, then Republish the Papers with Fewer Self-citations. Journal says: Fine.

Cite Yourself Excessively, Apologize, then Republish the Papers with Fewer Self-citations. Journal says: Fine.

Via Wikimedia A journal has allowed a geophysicist who cited his own work hundreds of times across 10 papers to retract the articles and republish them with a fraction of the self-citations. 

Inflated citations and metrics of journals discontinued from Scopus for publication concerns: the GhoS(t)copus Project

Inflated citations and metrics of journals discontinued from Scopus for publication concerns: the GhoS(t)copus Project

The citation count of journals discontinued for publication concerns increases despite discontinuation and predatory behaviors seemed common. This paradoxical trend can inflate scholars’ metrics prompting artificial career advancements, bonus systems and promotion. Countermeasures should be taken urgently to ensure the reliability of Scopus metrics both at the journal- and author-level for the purpose of scientific assessment of scholarly publishing.

The Sci-hub Effect: Sci-hub Downloads Lead to More Article Citations

The Sci-hub Effect: Sci-hub Downloads Lead to More Article Citations

This article examines how the number of downloads from Sci-hub as well as various characteristics of publications and their authors predicts future citations.

Does Tweeting Improve Citations? One-Year Results from the TSSMN Prospective Randomized Trial

Does Tweeting Improve Citations? One-Year Results from the TSSMN Prospective Randomized Trial

This study aims to evaluate the 1-year results of a prospective randomized social media trial to determine the effect of tweeting on subsequent citations and non-traditional bibliometrics.