Signals in science - On the importance of signaling in gaining attention in science

Abstract

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Abstract Which signals are important in gaining attention in science? For a group of 1,371 scientific articles published in 17 demography journals in the years 1990-1992 we track their influence and discern which signals are important in receiving citations. Three types of signals are examined: the author's reputation (as producer of the idea), the journal (as the broker of the idea), and the state of uncitedness (as an indication of the assessment by the scientific community of an idea). The empirical analysis points out that, first, the reputation of journals plays an overriding role in gaining attention in science. Second, in contrast to common wisdom, the state of uncitedness does not affect the future probability of being cited. And third, the reputation of a journal may help to ge t late recognition (so-called 'sleeping beauties') as well as generate so-called 'flash-in-the-pans': immediately noted articles but apparently not very influential in the long run. Terms of use: Documents in1

Mining typical features for highly cited papers

“…Van Dalen and Henkens (2005) reported that the status of uncitedness of a paper becomes a stigma and the longer a paper is uncited, the lower its quality and the less inclined researchers will be to cite it. Glänzel et al (2003) reported that the probability of a paper's uncitedness increases dramatically with belated first citations, and the probability of being frequently cited later on decreases to the same extent.…”

“…The social view stated that the various social factors in the communication process of papers, such as the status of the authors and the prestige of the journals in which they are published, are essential to determine their citation activities. Various features were identified from papers' scientific communication process (Fu and Aliferis 2010;Gilbert 1977;Laband and Piette 1994;Van Dalen and Henkens 2005).…”

The citation speed index: A useful bibliometric indicator to add to the h index

“…According to Dalen and Henkens (2005), the scientific quality of a publication can be determined not only based on the number of citations but also based on citation speed:…”

Patterns of annual citation of highly cited articles and the prediction of their citation ranking: A comparison across subjects

“…They found that 0.3% of those papers that were cited more frequently than 15 times in total were not cited between 1980 and 1984; van Raan found that only 41 of the articles from the ISI Citation Indexes published in 1988 received at most ten citations during the first ten years after publication and subsequently between 21 and 30 citations in the next four years. Other studies of delayed recognition include those of GARFIELD [1980] and GLÄNZEL & GARFIELD [2005] and other studies of sleeping beauties include those of VAN DALEN & HENKENS [2005] and BURRELL [2005].…”