The explosion of knowledge, references, and citations: Psychology's unique response to a crisis.

Adair, John G.; Vohra, Neharika

doi:10.1037/0003-066x.58.1.15

Cited by 78 publications

(94 citation statements)

References 16 publications

(23 reference statements)

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Marc Brysbaert, Department of Experimental Psychology, Ghent University, H. Dunantlaan 2, B-9000 Gent. E-mail: marc.brysbaert@ugent.be An interesting study within the traditional view has been published by Adair and Vohra (2003). Among other findings, they reported that the number of references in psychology journals increased considerably between the early 1970s (M = 13) and 2000 (M = 54).…”

Section: The Traditional Science-based View Of Reference Listsmentioning

confidence: 87%

Self-Enhancement in Scientific Research: The Self-citation Bias

Brysbaert

Smyth

2011

PSYCHOL BELG

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

A typical psychology article contains 3 to 9 self-citations, depending on the length of the reference list (10% of all citations). In contrast, cited colleagues rarely receive more than 3 citations. This is what we call the self-citation bias: the preference researchers have to refer to their own work when they guide readers to the relevant literature. We argue that this finding is difficult to understand within the traditional, science-based view, which says that reference lists are there to help the reader. It is more easily understood within a social view of reference lists which argues that scientists form groups and that reference lists partly reflect well-known phenomena in social psychology and group dynamics. Within this view, the self-citation bias is a self-serving bias motivated by self-enhancement and self-promotion. The self-citation bias in psychological scienceScientific publications are a never-ending source of inspiration, not only due to the information they contain but also because of the formal characteristics they adhere to. In particular the reference lists have been scrutinised recently with some quite remarkable findings. Below we summarise first the available evidence and we look then more specifically at the number of self-citations in journal articles and the reasons why authors cite themselves. The traditional, science-based view of reference listsReaders of scientific articles expect an article's reference list to comprise information about the publications they need for a good understanding of the article's contribution to the field (i.e., the cumulative nature of science) and for a replication of the reported studies if they wish to do so (i.e., the replicability of the findings). From this perspective, reference lists are at the readers' service, to help them find critical information. We will call this the traditional, science-based view of reference lists.

show abstract

Section: The Traditional Science-based View Of Reference Listsmentioning

confidence: 87%

Self-Enhancement in Scientific Research: The Self-citation Bias

Brysbaert

Smyth

2011

PSYCHOL BELG

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…In social psychology, both length of articles and length of reference sections partially mediate the difference in impact between articles in top-tier and second-tier journals (Haslam et al, 2008). Some scholars consider the trend toward longer reference lists in psychology to be a problematic consequence of a harsh culture of peer review (Adair & Vohra, 2003), and others have urged psychologists to adopt the more terse style of the natural sciences (Park, 2009;Taylor, 2009). Our fourth prediction was made on normative grounds.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Consequences of Predicting Scientific Impact in Psychology Using Journal Impact Factors

Hegarty

Walton

2012

Perspect Psychol Sci

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

An academic journal's impact factor (hereafter JIFs) is an average measure of the citation count of individual articles published in that journal. JIF is used to assess merit, predict impact, and allocate resources, but the actual number of citations to individual articles is only modestly correlated with the JIFs of the journals in which they are published. We counted Psycinfo citations to 1,134 papers published in nine leading psychology journals (1996)(1997)(1998)(1999)(2000)(2001)(2002)(2003)(2004)(2005). Both article length, r =.31, and reference list length, r = .41, predicted log-transformed citation counts better than JIF, r = .27. Articles with fewer graphs and more structural equation models were more frequently cited. Citation count was better predicted by a model based on article length and citation count rather than JIF. When JIF was used to predict citation count, the impact of women authors and social science research was underestimated. These findings distinguish impact in science, as measured by JIF, from actual impact in psychology, and show the unintended consequences of using a measure of the former to predict the latter.

show abstract

“…Another factor contributing to the increasing mean citations per year is the increasing length of the reference lists of articles over time (Adair & Vohra, 2003). Thus, to determine whether an increase in a journal's immediate impact factor for year Y relative to year X is due to factors other than a proliferation of new journals, one needs to focus on the magnitude of this increase relative to other similar journals in the discipline.…”

Section: Do Citations Measure Quality?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Citation rates for experimental psychology articles published between 1950 and 2004: Top-cited articles in behavioral cognitive psychology

2012

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

From citation rates for over 85,000 articles published between 1950 and 2004 in 56 psychology journals, we identified a total of 500 behavioral cognitive psychology articles that ranked in the top 0.6 % in each half-decade, in terms of their mean citations per year using the Web of Science. Thirty nine of these articles were produced by 78 authors who authored three or more of them, and more than half were published by only five journals. The mean number of cites per year and the total number of citations necessary for an article to achieve various percentile rankings are reported for each journal. The mean number of citations necessary for an article published within each half-decade to rank at any given percentile has steadily increased from 1950 to 2004. Of the articles that we surveyed, 11 % had zero total citations, and 35 % received fewer than four total citations. Citations for post-1994 articles ranking in the 50th-75th and 90th-95th percentiles have generally continued to grow across each of their 3-year postpublication bins. For pre-1995 articles ranking in the 50th-75th and 90th-95th percentiles, citations peaked in the 4-to 6-or 7-to 9-year postpublication bins and decreased linearly thereafter, until asymptoting. In contrast, for the top-500 articles, (a) for pre-1980 articles, citations grew and peaked 10-18-year postpublication bins, and after a slight decrease began to linearly increase again; (b) for post-1979 articles, citations have continually increased across years in a nearly linear fashion. We also report changes in topics covered by the top-cited articles over the decades. Keywords Citations . Cognitive psychology . Impact factor IntroductionThe number of citations that academic articles receive has become a well-accepted, objective measure for evaluating the impact (and likely the quality) of journals (Garfield, 1972), researchers, departments, programs, or institutions (Nosek et al., 2010;Rushton, 1984). A very high citation rate for a published article indicates that the research it reports has had a major impact in guiding the research reported in other articles in that field. Hence, an academic institution or research unit that has published many highly cited articles is thought to provide an environment in which important, high-impact research can be conducted, making that institution a more desirable location for other scientists or prospective students looking to advance their careers. For a journal, highly cited articles directly affect the journal's impact factor, which can influence journal submissions, because researchers strive to publish their articles in the most prestigious, and hence widely read, journals. As for individual researchers, total citation counts are correlated with eminence in one's field, as measured by their ability to predict future Nobel laureates (Garfield & WelljamsDorof, 1992) and attainment of other scientific awards (Myers, 1970). Moreover, the citation rate for each of an individual researcher's articles is a key component in determining th...

show abstract

The explosion of knowledge, references, and citations: Psychology's unique response to a crisis.

Cited by 78 publications

References 16 publications

Self-Enhancement in Scientific Research: The Self-citation Bias

Self-Enhancement in Scientific Research: The Self-citation Bias

The Consequences of Predicting Scientific Impact in Psychology Using Journal Impact Factors

Citation rates for experimental psychology articles published between 1950 and 2004: Top-cited articles in behavioral cognitive psychology

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About