Bibliometrics study: article usage and citation counts metric in trade liberalization

Abstract

This paper examined the relationship between article usage count and citation count metric for published studies in trade liberalization. Data were extracted from Thomson Reuters Web of Science, Social Science Citation Index Expanded database a hub for markedly prominent journals. The data covers articles that are published from 1980 to 2015. Our study grouped articles published in trade liberalization according to their total citations into 4 categories. These are 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th top 50 cited articles. Kruskal-Walis test was used to analyze the total citation and citation per year data. While Spearman's correlation was used to analyze prospective relationship between total citations received by articles and the length of abstract and article title word counts at 95% confidence interval. Based on the aforementioned arrangement, the usage count in the last 180 days and since from January 2013 to December, 2015 showed that 1st top 50 cited articles retained their position for both usage counts in the last 180 days and since 2013. Surprisingly, 4th top cited articles usage count since 2013 became second ranked to that of 1st top 50 articles. Thereby, surpassing 2nd and 3rd top 50 cited articles. Research and publication interest in the field of trade liberalization in the study period had grown remarkably. These research activities also attract huge usage counts especially from 2013 as acknowledged by this study. Moreover, this trend suggests that trade liberalization may have high impact on future research focus and on economic policies.