Invisible Publications: A Study of Academic Productivity in the Web of Science Database
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.3989/redc.2024.1.1454Keywords:
Academic productivism, Citation, Journal Citation Reports, Web of Science, invisible publicationsAbstract
The present study aims to outline the profile of uncited or rarely cited articles indexed in the Web of Science database between 2017 and 2021. We used stratified random sampling of 14,425 journals to extract our study sample of 373 journals. The dependent variable was defined as the number of citations, with independent variables being the JCR index, maturity, quartile, language of publication, and whether the research was funded. Descriptive statistics were used to characterize the sample according to field of research and variable. A negative binomial regression method was used to estimate which variables influence the number of citations received by articles in the sample. We found that of the 256,524 articles that make up the research corpus, 39,469 (15.39%) received no citations and 91,963 articles (35.85%) received up to four citations. The variables that positively influenced estimates of the number of citations were maturity (0.481), JCR index (0.159), and funding (0.020), while quartile (-0.170) and language (-1.032) had a negative influence on number of citations. We conclude that the pressures of academic productivism create a vicious cycle in which studies are referenced based on their ranking in the struggle for privileged editorial space, with articles in higher quartile journals being more prone to citation.
Downloads
References
Alcadipani, R. (2011). Resistir ao produtivismo: uma ode à perturbação acadêmica. Cadernos Ebape.br, 9(4), 1174-1178. https://doi.org/10.1590/S1679-39512011000400015
Álvarez Bornstein, B., & Montesi, M. (2020). Funding acknowledgements in scientific publications: A literature review. Research Evaluation, 29(4), 469-488. https://doi.org/10.1093/reseval/rvaa038
Asubiaro, T. (2019). How collaboration type, publication place, funding & author's role affect citations received by publications from Africa: A bibliometric study of LIS research from 1996 to 2015. Scientometrics, 120, 1261-1287. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-019-03157-1
Bornmann, L., & Marx, W. (2020). Thomas theorem in research evaluation. Scientometrics, 123(1), 553-555. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-020-03389-6
Castiel, L. D., & Sanz-Valero, J. (2007). Entre fetichismo e sobrevivência: o artigo científico é uma mercadoria acadêmica? Cadernos de Saúde Pública, 23(12), 3041-3050. https://doi.org/10.1590/S0102-311X2007001200026 PMid:18157347
De Rond, M., & Miller, A. N. (2005). Publish or perish: Bane or boon of academic life? Journal of Management Inquiry, 14(4), 321-329. https://doi.org/10.1177/1056492605276850
Demir, S. B. (2018). Predatory journals: Who publishes in them and why? Journal of Informetrics, 12(4), 1296-1311. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joi.2018.10.008
Denning, P. J. (1997). A new social contract for research. Communications of the ACM, 40(2), 132-134. https://doi.org/10.1145/253671.253755
Dettori, J. R., Norvell, D. C., & Chapman, J. R. (2019). Measuring academic success: The art and science of publication metrics. Global Spine Journal, 9(2), 243-246. https://doi.org/10.1177/2192568219831003 PMid:30984505 PMCid:PMC6448198
Diaz Ruiz, A., Orbe Arteaga, U., Rios, C., & Roldan Valadez, E. (2018). Alternative bibliometrics from the web of knowledge surpasses the impact factor in a 2-year ahead annual citation calculation: Linear mixed-design models' analysis of neuroscience journals. Neurology India, 68(1), 96-104. https://doi.org/10.4103/0028-3886.222880 PMid:29322967
Dorta-González, P., & Dorta-González, M. I. (2013). Hábitos de publicación y citación según campos científicos: Principales diferencias a partir de las revistas JCR. Revista Española de Documentación Científica, 36(4), en012. https://doi.org/10.3989/redc.2013.4.1003
Else, H., & Van Noorden, R. (2021). The fight against fake-paper factories that churn out sham science. Nature, 591(7851), 516-519. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-00733-5 PMid:33758408
Faber, F. T., Eriksen, M. B., & Hammer, D. M. G. (2021). Obsolescence of the literature: A study of included studies in Cochrane reviews. Journal of Information Science, 49(2), 437-447. https://doi.org/10.1177/01655515211006588
Fanelli, D. (2010). Do pressures to publish increase scientists' bias? An empirical support from US States Data. PloS one, 5(4), e10271. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0010271 PMid:20422014 PMCid:PMC2858206
Fávero, L. P., & Belfiore, P. (2021). Manual de Análise de Dados: Estatística e Modelagem Multivariada com Excel®, SPSS® e Stata®. Elsevier.
Furnham, A. (2021). Publish or perish: rejection, scientometrics and academic success. Scientometrics, 126(1), 843-847. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-020-03694-0
Garfield, E. (2006a). Citation indexes for science: A new dimension in documentation through association of ideas. International Journal of Epidemiology, 35(5), 1123-1127. https://doi.org/10.1093/ije/dyl189 PMid:16987841
Garfield, E. (1998). Long-term vs. short-term journal impact: does it matter. Physiologist, 41(3), 113-115.
Garfield, E. (2006b). The history and meaning of the Journal Impact Factor. JAMA, 295(1), 90-93. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.295.1.90 PMid:16391221
Gilyarevskii, R. S., Libkind, A. N., Libkind, I. A., & Bogorov, V. G. (2021). The obsolescence of cited and citing journals: Half-Lives and their connection to other bibliometric indicators. Automatic Documentation and Mathematical Linguistics, 55, 152-165. https://doi.org/10.3103/S0005105521040026
Godoi, C. K., & Xavier, W. G. (2012). O produtivismo e suas anomalias. Cadernos Ebape.br, 10(2), 456-465. https://doi.org/10.1590/S1679-39512012000200012
González-Sala, F., Silivestru, Y., Osca-Lluch, J., & Martí-Vilar, M. (2022). Journal self-citations included in the same thematic category of the Clarivate Journal Citation Reports (JCR): the case of the journal Adicciones. Revista Española de Documentación Científica, 45(3), e331. https://doi.org/10.3989/redc.2022.3.1886
Guo, X., Li, X., & Yu, Y. (2021). Publication delay adjusted impact factor: The effect of publication delay of articles on journal impact factor. Journal of Informetrics, 15(1), 101100. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joi.2020.101100
Haba-Osca, J., Gonzalez-Sala, F., & Osca-Lluch, J. (2019). Education journals worldwide: an analysis of the publications included in the 2016 Journal Citation Reports (JCR). Revista de Educación, 383, 113-131.
Hicks, D., Wouters, P., Waltman, L., De Rijcke, & S., Rafols, I. (2015). Bibliometrics: The Leiden manifesto for research metrics. Nature, 520, 429-431. https://doi.org/10.1038/520429a PMid:25903611
Kacem, A., Flatt, J. W., & Mayr, P. (2020). Tracking self-citations in academic publishing. Scientometrics. 123(2), 1157-1165. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-020-03413-9
Kaldas, M., Michael, S, Hanna, J., & Yousef, G. M. (2020). Journal impact factor: a bumpy ride in an open space. Journal of Investigative Medicine, 68(1), 83-87. https://doi.org/10.1136/jim-2019-001009 PMid:31248943
Kim, B., Kim, Y., & Kang, J. (2018). Analysis of the citation impact of national journals toward SCIE journals on JCR ranking. Malaysian Journal of Library & Information Science, 23(2), 1-24. https://doi.org/10.22452/mjlis.vol23no2.1
Krampl, A. (2019). Relatórios de citação de periódicos. Jornal da Associação de Bibliotecas Médicas, 107(2), 280-283.
Kulczycki, E., Hołowiecki, M., Taşkın, Z., & Krawczyk, F. (2021). Citation patterns between impact-factor and questionable journals. Scientometrics, 126, 8541-8560. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-021-04121-8
Larivière, V., Macaluso, B., Archambault, E., & Gingras, Y. (2010). Which scientific elites? On the concentration of research funds, publications and citations. Research Evaluation, 19(1), 45-53. https://doi.org/10.3152/095820210X492495
Lawrence, P. A. (2008). Lost in publication: how measurement harms science. Ethics in science and environmental politics, 8(1), 9-11. https://doi.org/10.3354/esep00079
Leite, J. L. (2017). Publicar ou perecer: a esfinge do produtivismo acadêmico. Revista Katálysis, 20(2), 207-215. https://doi.org/10.1590/1982-02592017v20n2p207
Liang, L., Rousseau, R., & Zhong, Z. (2013). Non-English journals and papers in physics and chemistry: bias in citations? Scientometrics, 95, 333-350. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-012-0828-0
Liu, F., Hu, G., Tang, L. & Liu, W. (2018). The penalty of containing more non-English articles. Scientometrics, 114, 359-366. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-017-2577-6
Machado, A. M. N., & Bianchetti, L. (2011). (Des)fetichização do produtivismo acadêmico: desafios para o trabalhador-pesquisador. Revista de Administração de Empresas, 51(3), 244-254. https://doi.org/10.1590/S0034-75902011000300005
Martins, G. A. (2002). Estatística geral e aplicada. (2nd ed.). Editora Atlas.
Miranda, R., & Garcia Carpintero, E. (2019). Comparison of the share of documents and citations from different quartile journals in 25 research areas. Scientometrics, 121, 479-501. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-019-03210-z
Moustafa, K. (2015). The disaster of the impact factor. Science and engineering ethics, 21(1), 139-142. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-014-9517-0 PMid:24469472
Pranckutė, R. (2021). Web of Science (WoS) and Scopus: The titans of bibliographic information in today's academic world. Publications, 9(1), 12. https://doi.org/10.3390/publications9010012
Price, D. J. S. (1976). A general theory of bibliometric and other cumulative advantage process. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 27(5-6), 292-306. Available at: http://garfield.library.upenn.edu/price/pricetheory1976.pdf. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.4630270505
Rego, T. C. (2014). Produtivismo, pesquisa e comunicação científica: entre o veneno e o remédio. Educação e Pesquisa, 40(2), 325-346. https://doi.org/10.1590/S1517-97022014061843
Rubbo, P., Pilatti, L. A., & Picinin, C. T. (2019). Citation of retracted articles in engineering: A study of the Web of Science database. Ethics & Behavior, 29(8), 661-679. https://doi.org/10.1080/10508422.2018.1559064
Saeed, S., Jhanjhi, N. Z., Naqvi, M., Malik, N. A., & Humayun, M. (2019). Disparage the Barriers of Journal Citation Reports (JCR). International Journal of Computer Science and Network Security, 19(5), 156-175. Available at: http://paper.ijcsns.org/07_book/201905/20190523.pdf.
Sayão, L. F., Sales, L. F., & Felipe, C. B. M. (2021). Invisible science: publication of negative research results. Transinformação, 33, e200009. https://doi.org/10.1590/2318-0889202133e200009
Smith, P. (1990). Killing the spirit: Higher education in America. Viking Penguin Publishing.
Suryani, I., Yaacob, A., & Aziz, N. H. A. (2015). Introduction sections of research articles with high and low citation indices. Pertanika Journal of Social Sciences & Humanities, 23(4), 1139-1152. Corpus ID: 64552981.
Sykes, C. J. (1988). Profscam: Professors and the demise of higher education. Regnery Publishing.
Szomszor, M., Pendlebury, D. A., & Adams, J. (2020). How much is too much? The difference between research influence and self-citation excess. Scientometrics, 123(2), 1119-1147. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-020-03417-5
Tahamtan, I., Safipour Afshar, A. & Ahamdzadeh, K. (2016). Factors affecting the number of citations: a comprehensive review of the literature. Scientometrics, 107, 1195-1225. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-016-1889-2
Tang, L. (2013). Does "birds of a feather flock together" matter-Evidence from a longitudinal study on US-China scientific collaboration. Journal of Informetrics, 7(2). 330-344. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joi.2012.11.010
Tian, M., Su, Y., & Ru, X. (2016). Perish or publish in China: Pressures on young Chinese scholars to publish in internationally indexed journals. Publications, 4(2), 9. https://doi.org/10.3390/publications4020009
Zuin, A. A. S., & Bianchetti, L. (2015). O produtivismo na era do "publique, apareça ou pereça": um equilíbrio difícil e necessário. Cadernos de Pesquisa, 45(158), 726-750. https://doi.org/10.1590/198053143294
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2024 Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
© CSIC. Manuscripts published in both the printed and online versions of this Journal are the property of Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, and quoting this source is a requirement for any partial or full reproduction.All contents of this electronic edition, except where otherwise noted, are distributed under a “Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International” (CC BY 4.0) License. You may read here the basic information and the legal text of the license. The indication of the CC BY 4.0 License must be expressly stated in this way when necessary.
Self-archiving in repositories, personal webpages or similar, of any version other than the published by the Editor, is not allowed.