Citations, Citation Indicators, and Research Quality: An Overview of Basic Concepts and Theories

By Dag W. Aksnes, L. Langfeldt, Paul F. Wouters. SAGE Open, 2019

1,000 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Citations are increasingly used as performance indicators in research policy and within the research system. Usually, citations are assumed to reflect the impact of the research or its quality. What is the justification for these assumptions and how do citations relate to research quality? These and similar issues have been addressed through several decades of scientometric research. This article provides an overview of some of the main issues at stake, including theories of citation and the interpretation and validity of citations as performance measures. Research quality is a multidimensional concept, where plausibility/soundness, originality, scientific value, and societal value commonly are perceived as key characteristics. The article investigates how citations may relate to these various research quality dimensions. It is argued that citations reflect aspects related to scientific impact and relevance, although with important limitations. On the contrary, there is no evidence that citations reflect other key dimensions of research quality. Hence, an increased use of citation indicators in research evaluation and funding may imply less attention to these other research quality dimensions, such as solidity/plausibility, originality, and societal value.

Subfields: Information Systems and Management, Statistics and Probability

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/59660bbee2813e0ddc65cd8e7fa35ea51f58b6e7

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Information Systems and Management

D. Bassett

In Statistics and Probability

Citations in the corpus

The extent and drivers of gender imbalance in neuroscience reference lists (2020, background): “Although the usefulness of citations as a measure of scientific value is tenuous (44), the engagement that they represent can affect how central to a field scholars are viewed to be by their peers (17).”