Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present a narrative review of studies on the citing behavior of scientists, covering mainly research published in the last 15 years. Based on the results of these studies, the paper seeks to answer the question of the extent to which scientists are motivated to cite a publication not only to acknowledge intellectual and cognitive influences of scientific peers, but also for other, possibly non‐scientific, reasons.Design/methodology/approach – The review covers research published from the early 1960s up to mid‐2005 (approximately 30 studies on citing behavior‐reporting results in about 40 publications).Findings – The general tendency of the results of the empirical studies makes it clear that citing behavior is not motivated solely by the wish to acknowledge intellectual and cognitive influences of colleague scientists, since the individual studies reveal also other, in part non‐scientific, factors that play a part in the decision to cite. However, the results of t...

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What do citation counts measure? A review of studies on citing behavior

Frontispiece - Derek J de Solla Price Introduction - Christine L Borgman PART ONE: THEORY AND PERSPECTIVE Understanding Science - Belver C Griffith Studies of Communication and Information Disciplinary Work and Interdisciplinary Areas - Sydney J Pierce Sociology and Bibliometrics Reconciling Structure and Process in the Study of Scholarly Communication - Leah A Lievrouw PART TWO: BIBLIOMETRIC RESEARCH METHODS A View of Studies on Bibliometrics and Related Subjects in Japan - S Miyamoto, N Midorikawa and K Nakayama Author Co-citation Studies - Howard D White Overview and Defense Who Carries the Field? Communication Between Literary Schools and Critics - Karl Erik Rosengren The Absence of Co-citation as a Clue to Undiscovered Causal Connections - Don R Swanson Hierarchies and Clusters Among Communication and Library and Information Science Journals, 1977 - 1987 - Ronald E Rice PART THREE: EMPIRICAL STUDIES An Author Co-citation Analysis of Two Research Traditions - Everett M Rogers and Charlotte A Cottrill Technology Transfer and the Diffusion of Innovations A Co-citation Study of AIDS Research - Henry Small and Edwin Greenlee Mapping Authors in Intellectual Space - Katherine W McCain Population Genetics in the 1980s International Scientific Cooperation and Awareness - H F Moed and R E DeBruin A Bibliometric Case Study of Agricultural Research Within the European Community Core Journals of the Rapidly Changing Research Front of "Superconductivity" - Terrance A Brooks Editors-in-Chief of Medical Journals - S Zsindely and A Schubert Identifying the Important Theorists of Communication - James R Beniger Use of Latent Measures to Test Manifest Assumptions in Scholarly Communication Conclusions - William Paisley The Future of Bibliometrics

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Scholarly Communication and Bibliometrics

Since Vassily V. Nalimov coined the term ‘scientometrics’ in the 1960s, this term has grown in popularity and is used to describe the study of science: growth, structure, interrelationships and productivity. Scientometrics is related to and has overlapping interests with bibliometrics and informetrics. The terms bibliometrics, scientometrics, and informetrics refer to component fields related to the study of the dynamics of disciplines as reflected in the production of their literature. Areas of study range from charting changes in the output of a scholarly field through time and across countries, to the library collection problem of maintaining control of the output, and to the low publication productivity of most researchers. These terms are used to describe similar and overlapping methodologies. The origins and historical survey of the development of each of these terms are presented. Profiles of the usage of each of these terms over time are presented, using an appropriate subject category of databases on the DIALOG information service. Various definitions of each of the terms are provided from an examination of the literature. The size of the overall literature of these fields is determined and the growth and stabilisation of both the dissertation and non-dissertation literature are shown. A listing of the top journals in the three fields are given, as well as a list of the major reviews and bibliographies that have been published over the years.

https://www.elshami.com/Terms/B/bibliometrics-Literature%202001.pdf

The Literature of Bibliometrics, Scientometrics, and Informetrics

The scope and significance of the field of informetrics is defined and related to the earlier fields of bibliometrics and scientometrics. The phenomena studied by informetricians are identified. The major contributors to the field in the past are described and current emphases are related to the contributions in this Special Issue.

An introduction to informetrics

This study investigates differences in use of, and attitudes toward the Internet and computers generally for Chinese and British students, and gender differences in this cross-cultural context. Two hundred and twenty Chinese and 245 British students’ responses to a self-report survey questionnaire are discussed. Significant differences were found in Internet experience, attitudes, usage, and self-confidence between Chinese and British students. British students were more likely to use computers for study purposes than Chinese students, but Chinese students were more self-confident about their advanced computer skills. Significant gender differences were also found in both national groups. Men in both countries were more likely than women to use email or ‘chat’ rooms. Men played more computer games than women; Chinese men being the most active games players. Men in both countries were more self-confident about their computer skills than women, and were more likely to express the opinion that using computers was a male activity and skill than were women. Gender differences were higher in the British group than the Chinese group. The present study illustrates the continued significance of gender in students’ attitudes towards, and use of computers, within different cultural contexts.

Gender and cultural differences in Internet use: A study of China and the UK

A Survey on the Use of Electronic Databases and Electronic Journals Accessed through the Web by the Academic Staff of Israeli Universities

The paper proposes a classification scheme for the roles of citations in empirical studies from the social sciences and related fields. The use of the classification, which has eight categories, is illustrated in sociology, education, demography, epidemiology and librarianship; its association with the citations' location within the paper is presented. The question of repeated citations of the same document is discussed. Several research questions to which this classification is relevant are proposed. The need for further critique, validation and experimentation is pointed out.

A classification of citation roles for the social sciences and related fields

The purpose of this study was to examine and compare use of the Internet among various sectors of the faculty, in order to verify the influence of a number of parameters on this use, e.g.: (1) The field and research interests of the faculty members; (2) formal training in the use of the internet via courses, workshops, etc.; (3) self-instruction in the use of the Internet by means of manuals, how-to books, etc.; (4) general use and knowledge of computers; and (5) perceived need for the information this network can provide. Questionnaires were sent to faculty members in all departments and professional schools of The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, a total population of 918 for both the pilot project and the main study. Results indicated that Internet use is consistently higher among faculty members in the sciences and agriculture (“Sciagr”) than among those in the humanities or social sciences (“Humsoc”), suggesting that, among other things, the connectivity level of the Humsoc group may be lowr than that of the Sciagr group. The Humsoc group also showed a higher demand for courses in Internet use. Suggestions for raising the level of Internet use among the various disciplines of the faculty are included. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Internet use by faculty members in various disciplines: A comparative case study

The present paper analyzes the changes that occurred to a set of Web pages related to "informetrics" over a period of 5 years between June 1998 and June 2003. Four times during this time span, in 1998, 1999, 2002, and 2003, we monitored previously located pages and searched for new ones related to the topic. Thus, we were able to study the growth of the topic, while analyzing the rates of change and disappearance. The results indicate that modification, disappearance, and resurfacing cannot be ignored when studying the structure and development of the Web.

Evolution, continuity, and disappearance of documents on a specific topic on the web: a longitudinal study of Informetrics

Citation analysis can go beyond its present preoccupations and explore new areas if it follows several rules of research design—some of them known and generally accepted, others specific to this discipline: (a) a rigorous definition of the research objectives is essential in deciding on its design, including the selection and definition of variables and the measurement of their effects; (b) the ascertainment of content-related variables enhances the theoretical interest and practical usefulness of citation analysis, although it may entail the use of smaller samples; (c) the set of papers to be compared with respect to citation frequency should be stratified in order to make them as similar as possible to each other; (d) the dependent variable, citation frequency, may comprise more than one kind of citation; (e) the elementary methods of analysis based on stratification (or matching) and adjustment should be complemented by model-based methods which could accomodate larger numbers of variables and would take into account the skewness of citation count distributions © 1992 John Wiley & Sons, Inc

Bluma C. Peritz

Papers

A Survey on the Use of Electronic Databases and Electronic Journals Accessed through the Web by the Academic Staff of Israeli Universities

A classification of citation roles for the social sciences and related fields

Internet use by faculty members in various disciplines: A comparative case study

Evolution, continuity, and disappearance of documents on a specific topic on the web: a longitudinal study of Informetrics

On the Objectives of Citation Analysis: Problems of Theory and Method