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Citation concept analysis (CCA) - A new form of citation analysis revealing the usefulness of concepts for other researchers illustrated by two exemplary case studies including classic books by Thomas S. Kuhn and Karl R. Popper
In recent years, the full text of papers are increasingly available
electronically which opens up the possibility of quantitatively investigating
citation contexts in more detail. In this study, we introduce a new form of
citation analysis, which we call citation concept analysis (CCA). CCA is
intended to reveal the cognitive impact certain concepts -- published in a
document -- have on the citing authors. It counts the number of times the
concepts are mentioned (cited) in the citation context of citing publications.
We demonstrate the method using three classical examples: (1) The structure of
scientific revolutions by Thomas S. Kuhn, (2) The logic of scientific discovery
- Logik der Forschung: Zur Erkenntnistheorie der modernen Naturwissenschaft in
German -, and (3) Conjectures and refutations: the growth of scientific
knowledge by Karl R. Popper. It is not surprising -- as our results show --
that Kuhn's "paradigm" concept has had a significant impact. What is surprising
is that it has had such a disproportionately larger impact than Kuhn's other
concepts, e.g., "scientific revolution". The paradigm concept accounts for over
80% of the concept-related citations to Kuhn's work, and its impact is
resilient across all disciplines and over time. With respect to Popper,
"falsification" is the most used concept derived from his books. Falsification,
after all, is the cornerstone of Popper's critical rationalism