Multiple publication on a single research study: Does it pay? The influence of number of research articles on total citation counts in biomedicine

Abstract

Scientists may seek to report a single definable body of research in more than one publication, that is, in repeated reports of the same work or in fractional reports, in order to disseminate their research as widely as possible in the scientific community. Up to now, however, it has not been examined whether this strategy of "multiple publication" in fact leads to greater reception of the research. In the present study, we investigate the influence of number of articles reporting the results of a single study on reception in the scientific community (total citation counts of an article on a single study). Our data set consists of 96 applicants for a research fellowship from the Boehringer Ingelheim Fonds (BIF), an international foundation for the promotion of basic research in biomedicine. The applicants reported to us all articles that they had published within the framework of their doctoral research projects. On this single project, the applicants had published from 1 to 16 articles (M ‫؍‬ 4; Mdn ‫؍‬ 3). The results of a regression model with an interaction term show that the practice of multiple publication of research study results does in fact lead to greater reception of the research (higher total citation counts) in the scientific community. However, reception is dependent upon length of article: the longer the article, the more total citation counts increase with the number of articles. Thus, it pays for scientists to practice multiple publication of study results in the form of sizable reports.

Selecting manuscripts for a high‐impact journal through peer review: A citation analysis of communications that were accepted by Angewandte Chemie International Edition, or rejected but published elsewhere

“…This finding may be due to the fact that all of the publications that were entered into the model calculations were originally submitted to AC-IE as Communications and were thus similar in length. Even if a number of the rejected manuscripts were published elsewhere not as Communications but as full papers, it appears that their information content-despite any variation in number of pages-still usually accorded with a Communication (on this, see Bornmann & Daniel, 2007c).…”

“…The probability of citation may be influenced by the number of authors (Glänzel, Debackere, Thijs, & Schubert, 2006;Leimu & Koricheva, 2005; see above), the number of pages in a publication (Bornmann & Daniel, 2007c), the language of the journal in which a publication appears, and the field or discipline to which the journal can be assigned . In addition, consistent with Robert K. Merton's interpretation of the Matthew effect in science (Merton, 1968) and Cozzens' (1985) "success-breeds-success" phenomenon, publications by authors whose works have been very frequently cited in the past can be expected to be cited more often than publications by authors who have not published highly cited works in the past.…”

Which factors help authors produce the highest impact research? Collaboration, journal and document properties

“…A large scale study also found the JIF to be the most important determinant of citation impact in 17 disciplines (including Biology & Biochemistry, Chemistry and Social Sciences) out of 24 disciplines and there was a positive significant correlation between this factor and article citation counts (Boyack & Klavans, 2005). The extent to which this factor associates with increased citations was not determined in the above studies, however, but an investigation of Biomedicine articles found the JIF to contribute to an 11% increase in the number of citations to papers (Bornmann & Daniel, 2007).…”

“…A large scale study also found the JIF to be the most important determinant of citation impact in 17 disciplines (including Biology & Biochemistry, Chemistry and Social Sciences) out of 24 disciplines and there was a positive significant correlation between this factor and article citation counts (Boyack & Klavans, 2005). The extent to which this factor associates with increased citations was not determined in the above studies, however, but an investigation of Biomedicine articles found the JIF to contribute to an 11% increase in the number of citations to papers (Bornmann & Daniel, 2007).While most studies have confirmed that the JIF significantly associates with citation counts for articles, there are some exceptions. For instance, the impact of ecological journals was not found significantly associate with the number of citations to individual articles (Leimu & Koricheva, 2005a).…”

Citation counts for research evaluation: standards of good practice for analyzing bibliometric data and presenting and interpreting results

“…There is also a positive correlation between the citation frequency of publications and (1) the number of co-authors of the work (Lawani 1986, Baldi 1998, Beaver 2004, and (2) the number of the references within the work (Peters & van Raan 1994). And, as longer articles have more content that can be cited than do shorter articles, the sheer size of an article influences whether it is cited (Laband 1990, Stewart 1990, Abt 1993, Baldi 1998, Leimu & Koricheva 2005, Bornmann & Daniel 2007b, Hudson 2007. The document type, number of coauthors, number of references, and number of pages of the cited publication should accordingly be included in the statistical analysis as independent variables.…”