RHECITAS: citation analysis of French humanities articles

International audienceThe RHECITAS project aims at the analysis of citations in French Humanities and Social Sciences articles using natural language processing techniques. It is based on a corpus of online articles, through the aid of natural language processing tools. The project is funded by TGE-ADONIS (CNRS, French National Research Centre). Although very little research, either theoretical and technical, has been made on such data (most approaches focusing on science publications written in English), we developed two different tools that can automatically a) identify the more important items in a list of references, based on a number of linguistic cues, and b) extract relevant terms associated to a reference. These results show a new angle on citation analysis, both from a linguistic point of view and for practical applications

Measuring academic influence: Not all citations are equal

The importance of a research article is routinely measured by counting how many times it has been cited. However, treating all citations with equal weight ignores the wide variety of functions that citations perform. We want to automatically identify the subset of references in a bibliography that have a central academic influence on the citing paper. For this purpose, we examine the effectiveness of a variety of features for determining the academic influence of a citation. By asking authors to identify the key references in their own work, we created a data set in which citations were labeled according to their academic influence. Using automatic feature selection with supervised machine learning, we found a model for predicting academic influence that achieves good performance on this data set using only four features. The best features, among those we evaluated, were those based on the number of times a reference is mentioned in the body of a citing paper. The performance of these features inspired us to design an influence-primed h-index (the hip-index). Unlike the conventional h-index, it weights citations by how many times a reference is mentioned. According to our experiments, the hip-index is a better indicator of researcher performance than the conventional h-index

Unraveling Scientific Impact

The number of citations a paper receives is the most commonly used measure of scientific impact. In this paper, we study not only the number but also the type of citations that 659 marketing articles generated. We discern five citation types: application, affirmation, negation, review and perfunctory mention (i.e., citing an article only indirectly without really using it). Prior literature in scientometrics recognizes that the former three types, on average, signal a higher level of scientific indebtedness than the latter two types. In our sample, these three types of citation represent only 15% of all citations. We also find different determinants of citation behavior across citation types. Across the 49 determinants we included, only 13 have the same effect across all citation types, of which only 5 are statistically significant across all citation types. For instance, we find a significant inverted U-effect of challenging commonly held beliefs on citations counts, but only for three of the citation types: affirmation, review and perfunctory mention. Our results encourage scientific stakeholders to move beyond mere citation counts to assess a paper’s or a scholar’s scientific contribution, as well as to devote greater attention to the citation process itself

A rapid review of the Greek research and development system

Η παρούσα έκθεση παρουσιάζει τα ευρήματα μιας σύντομης ανασκόπησης του ελληνικού συστήματος έρευνας και ανάπτυξης (Ε&Α). Η ανασκόπηση προετοιμάστηκε σε μια μικρή περίοδο τεσσάρων μηνών (Απρίλιος – Ιούλιος 2011) και επικεντρώθηκε στα Ερευνητικά Κέντρα (ΕΚ) που χρηματοδοτούνται από το δημόσιο υπό την εποπτεία της Γενικής Γραμματείας Έρευνας και Τεχνολογίας (ΓΓΕΤ) τα οποία και αντιστοιχούν περίπου στο ένα πέμπτο της ερευνητικής δραστηριότητας στην Ελλάδα. Ο έλεγχος βασίζεται σε μια ανάλυση SWOT των δυνατών σημείων, των αδυναμιών, των ευκαιριών και των απειλών που σχετίζονται με το ελληνικό σύστημα έρευνας. Η ανάλυση SWOT διαμορφώθηκε μέσα από συνεντεύξεις και συζητήσεις με την ηγεσία των ΕΚ, ανασκόπηση εγγράφων και βιβλιογραφίας, ανασκόπηση εξωτερικών αξιολογήσεων που έγιναν το 2005 (από ομότιμους κριτές), δευτερογενή έρευνα και βιβλιομετρική ανάλυση. Η βιβλιομετρική ανάλυση αφορούσε σειρά έγκριτων ερευνητικών δημοσιεύσεων και αναφορών της ελληνικής έρευνας μεταξύ του 2000 και 2004. Η ανάλυση κατέληξε στα εξής: 1. Το ελληνικό σύστημα Ε&Α χρειάζεται άμεση μεταρρύθμιση. Η ανάλυση SWOT εντόπισε αρκετές αδυναμίες στο υπάρχον σύστημα που είναι αναγκαίο να αντιμετωπιστούν. 2. Με βάση την ανάλυση SWOT, παρουσιάζεται ένα προσχέδιο μιας μελλοντικής στρατηγικής για το σύστημα Ε&Α, περιλαμβανομένου ενός συνόλου υποκείμενων αρχών και επτά “ιδεών” που μπορούν να ληφθούν υπόψη για τη δημιουργία του προγράμματος

Unraveling scientific impact: Citation types in marketing journals

AbstractThe number of citations a paper receives is the most commonly used measure of scientific impact. In this paper, we study not only the number but also the type of citations that 659 marketing articles generated. We discern five citation types: application, affirmation, negation, review and perfunctory mention (i.e., citing an article only indirectly without really using it). Prior literature in scientometrics recognizes that the former three types, on average, signal a higher level of scientific indebtedness than the latter two types. In our sample, these three types of citation represent only 15% of all citations. We also find different determinants of citation behavior across citation types. Across the 49 determinants we included, only 13 have the same effect across all citation types, of which only 5 are statistically significant across all citation types. For instance, we find a significant inverted U-effect of challenging commonly held beliefs on citation counts, but only for three of the citation types: affirmation, review and perfunctory mention. Our results encourage scientific stakeholders to move beyond mere citation counts to assess a paper's or a scholar's scientific contribution, as well as to devote greater attention to the citation process itself

Citation Context Analysis as a Method for Conducting Rigorous and Impactful Literature Reviews

Citation context analysis is a detailed and rigorous form of literature review that goes beyond traditional narrative and systematic reviews to better understand the impact of seminal works and influential authors. We discuss the types of questions citation context analyses can answer and provide a set of guidelines for how to effectively conduct them. Citation context analysis holds promise for enabling a more systematic assessment of how theories are used, empirically tested, and critiqued by subsequent citing authors. This has implications for both theory development and testing, and for the improvement of citation practices within the field of organizational studies and the social and physical sciences more broadly

Source-use Practice in Research Reports: The Case of Colleges of Applied Sciences Undergraduates in the Disciplines of Accounting and International Business

Source-use practice is important to the construction of scientific knowledge. This study attempts to develop understanding of the use of sources in undergraduate research report writing. It is situated in one college of the Colleges of Applied Sciences (CAS) in Oman, and examines the different rhetorical functions of citations used by final-year Accounting and International Business students, as well as the contextual layers that seem to have shaped students’ source-use practices. Data were collected from 11 students from each discipline and their 6 teachers, and 22 research reports were analysed to identify the rhetorical function of all citations appearing in all sections of students’ research reports. Petrić’s (2007) typology, which consists of 9 functions of citations, was used to analyse the data. Results of the textual analysis show that most citations were located in the literature review chapters, and citations were mainly used to display knowledge and summarize sources. There were a few attempts to use sources for more complex rhetorical functions in both disciplines; these attempts were only made by students with a higher level of English proficiency. Findings also suggest two new functions that are not included in Petrić’s typology: textual structuring and acknowledgment of authorship for content display. These functions further indicate students’ extreme lack of understanding of the role of sources in academic writing and their inability to synthesize. In addition, relevant documents were examined and interviews with the students and their teachers were conducted. Analysis of these data suggest that the college, department, task, teacher, and prior student cohorts all play a role in influencing students’ source-use knowledge and practices. Pedagogical implications are suggested to inform EAP instruction regarding the teaching of source use and to guide constructive collaboration between EAP teachers and subject-area teachers in CAS to support the teaching of citation use