Influence of selected factors in journals’ citations

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the influence of selected factors in journal citations. Various factors can affect citation distribution of journals. Among them, skewness of citations distribution, author self-citation, journal self-citation and recitations (RCs) have been studied.

Design/methodology/approach The present study based on 16 systematically selected journals indexed in Scopus under the subject category “Library and Information Science.” The study was confined to original research and review articles that were published in the selected journals in the year 2011. The temporal citation window from 2011 to 2014 was taken for analysis. Tools like Scopus author ID, ORCID and author profiles from Google Scholar were used to minimize the error due to homonyms, spelling variances and misspelling in authors’ names.

Findings It is found that citation distribution in the majority of the journals under the study is highly skewed and more likely to follow a log-normal distribution. The nature of authorship in papers was found to have a positive effect on citation counts. Self-citing data show that higher-ranked journals have rather less direct impact on total citation counts than their lower counterparts. RCs are also found to be more in top-tier journals. Though the influence of self-citations and RCs were relatively less at an individual level on total citations of journals but combined, they can play a dominant role and can affect total citation counts of journals at significant level.

Research limitations/implications The present study is based on the Scopus database only. Therefore, citation data can be affected by the inherent limitation of Scopus. Readers are encouraged to further the study by taking into account large sample and tracing citations from an array of citation indexes, such as Web of Science, Google citations, Indian Citation Index, etc.

Originality/value This paper reinforces that the citations received by journals can be affected by the factors selected in this study. Therefore, the study provides a better understanding of the role of these selected factors in journal citations.