Between texts and contexts: Advances in theories of citation? (A rejoinder)

La transformación digital en los métodos y temas de la investigación brasileña de Información y Documentación 2010-2019

A partir de la base de datos Social Sciences Citation Index de WoS se identifican los artículos científicos brasileños que atienden a temas y métodos relacionados con la transformación digital en Información y Documentación, en el intervalo 2010-2019. Con los títulos y palabras clave de los 1039 artículos recuperados se elaboran tablas dinámicas. Luego los títulos se categorizan por expertos, mientras que para las keywords se usa el modelo de n-grams con el filtro de Fruchterman-Reingold. Sus coocurrencias se visualizan en clústeres elaborados con el método Louvain de detección de comunidades. Los resultados se exponen en tablas y gráficos comentados sobre la internacionalización, coautoría e interdisciplinariedad de los artículos, junto a las técnicas de investigación seguidas en ellos. Se estudia la progresión temática de los que se refieren al ambiente y la transformación digital. Se evidencia una aportación numerosa y significativa de los autores brasileños al estudio de los efectos que los escenarios digitales causan en el sector de la información.

Towards a More Realistic Citation Model: The Key Role of Research Team Sizes

We propose a new citation model which builds on the existing models that explicitly or implicitly include “direct” and “indirect” (learning about a cited paper’s existence from references in another paper) citation mechanisms. Our model departs from the usual, unrealistic assumption of uniform probability of direct citation, in which initial differences in citation arise purely randomly. Instead, we demonstrate that a two-mechanism model in which the probability of direct citation is proportional to the number of authors on a paper (team size) is able to reproduce the empirical citation distributions of articles published in the field of astronomy remarkably well, and at different points in time. Interpretation of our model is that the intrinsic citation capacity, and hence the initial visibility of a paper, will be enhanced when more people are intimately familiar with some work, favoring papers from larger teams. While the intrinsic citation capacity cannot depend only on the team size, our model demonstrates that it must be to some degree correlated with it, and distributed in a similar way, i.e., having a power-law tail. Consequently, our team-size model qualitatively explains the existence of a correlation between the number of citations and the number of authors on a paper.

An Origin of Citations: Darwin's Collaborators and Their Contributions to the Origin of Species

In the first edition of the Origin of Species (1859), Charles Darwin apologized for not correctly referencing all the works cited in his magnum opus. More than 150 years later we have catalogued these citations and analyzed the resultant data. Looking for a complete selection of collaborators, a flexible interpretation of the term citation was necessary; we define it as any reference made to a third party, independently of its form or function. Following the same idea, the sixth edition of the Origin, originally published in 1872 and reprinted with minor additions and corrections in 1876, was chosen for the research because it represents the end of a long debate between Darwin and his peers. It naturally is the edition with the greatest number of citations and collaborators. Through a diverse theoretical analysis, we aim to present a new perspective for the study of the Origin of Species: a bibliographic approach that provides the tools needed to understand the history of the book as a physical and cultural object. Bibliometrics provides a theory of citations as well as a quantitative analysis; science studies highlights the profound social aspects of science in the making. The analysis resulted in 639 citations to 298 collaborators and provided a new perspective of the rhetorical structure of the Origin, even though these results are only the tip of the iceberg of the potential of all the data gathered in this study.

Demarcações epistemológicas dos estudos de citação: concepção sociocultural das citações

RESUMO Revela as demarcações epistemológicas que configuram os estudos de citação na contemporaneidade. Parte-se do pressuposto de que os contextos sociais e culturais são vitais no desenvolvimento dos estudos de citação, na medida em que eles formalizam a relação entre a produção e as práticas de citação. Tem como objetivo propor o delineamento epistemológico inicial para uma concepção sociocultural das citações, com ênfase na explicitação das influências dos múltiplos contextos nos processos de produção e citação dos cientistas. Apresenta e discute os componentes científicos para a concepção sociocultural das citações, de natureza complementar às teorias das citações. Sugere uma matriz epistemológica para os estudos de citação e também um modelo multidimensional analítico para futuras investigações. Conclui que a concepção sociocultural pode ser aplicada metodologicamente, de forma complementar, em pesquisas que problematizem a relação estabelecida entre produção e citação.

How are academic age, productivity and collaboration related to citing behavior of researchers?

References are an essential component of research articles and therefore of scientific communication. In this study we investigate referencing (citing) behavior in five diverse fields (astronomy, mathematics, robotics, ecology and economics) based on 213,756 core journal articles. At the macro level we find: (a) a steady increase in the number of references per article over the period studied (50 years), which in some fields is due to a higher rate of usage, while in others reflects longer articles and (b) an increase in all fields in the fraction of older, foundational references since the 1980s, with no obvious change in citing patterns associated with the introduction of the Internet. At the meso level we explore current (2006-2010) referencing behavior of different categories of authors (21,562 total) within each field, based on their academic age, productivity and collaborative practices. Contrary to some previous findings and expectations we find that senior researchers use references at the same rate as their junior colleagues, with similar rates of re-citation (use of same references in multiple papers). High Modified Price Index (MPI, which measures the speed of the research front more accurately than the traditional Price Index) of senior authors indicates that their research has the similar cutting-edge aspect as that of their younger colleagues. In all fields both the productive researchers and especially those who collaborate more use a significantly lower fraction of foundational references and have much higher MPI and lower re-citation rates, i.e., they are the ones pushing the research front regardless of researcher age. This paper introduces improved bibliometric methods to measure the speed of the research front, disambiguate lead authors in co-authored papers and decouple measures of productivity and collaboration.