Defining the unscholarly publication: a bibliometric study of uncited and barely cited publications

Abstract

Bibliometric studies often exclude documents with little or no scientific content. Yet, identifying and classifying the unscholarly publication is a complex matter, and misclassifications often occur. Reference-based classifications are frequently proposed and implemented in bibliometric studies. Unfortunately, with little support for the actual classifications. In search of valid separation of scholarly/unscholarly publications, this study explores the correlation between number of references and citations received. Data was drawn from Scopus, and two separate analyses were conducted. The first analysis focus on journal articles published in the year 2000 from each of the four major subject areas in Scopus: Health sciences, life sciences, physical sciences and social sciences. The second analysis focus on all journal articles published in either 2000, 2005, 2010, 2015 or 2020. None of the analyses identified a natural cutoff point between scholarly and unscholarly publications. There is no significant point in the distribution that could more clearly distinguish scholarly from unscholarly publications than prior suggestions. In addition, the results of this study demonstrate how bibliometric analyses are impacted by defining scholarly publications on the number of references across different subject areas.

The decrease in uncited articles and its effect on the concentration of citations

“…Any change in the factors that affect uncited articles—such as the total number of citing articles—are likely to influence concentration. Frandsen and Nicolaisen (2023) recently showed that articles with few references are much less likely to be cited and that uncitedness varies between fields. Previous research has also shown that uncitedness changes over time (Pan et al, 2018; Wallace et al, 2009), given the inclusion of new sources, increasing reference list lengths and the broader availability of scientific articles.…”

Publishing in library and information science journals: The success of less experienced researchers

“…The aphorism publish or perish describes the fact, that in order to succeed in academia, researchers need to publish academic works. Thus, less experienced researchers such as early career researchers are under great pressure to publish [1] and they seem to have responded to the pressure by increasing their productivity measured as the number of published articles or reviews [2]. Productivity in the early phases of the research career is important as early career publishing is correlated with future research excellence.…”