Peng and Zhu’s Article on Citation Analysis Goes Online

Peng and Zhu’s Article on Citation Analysis Goes Online

A spin-off study of a comprehensive review of Internet studies by Peng et al. (2013) will be published in September this year, with the online version already available at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/asi.22649/abstract:

Abstract: This study explores the factors influencing citations to Internet studies by assessing the relative explanatory power of three perspectives: normative theory, the social constructivist approach, and a natural growth mechanism. Using data on 7,700+ articles of Internet studies published in 100+ Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI)-listed journals in 2000–2009, the study adopted a multilevel model to disentangle the impact between article- and journal-level factors on citations. This research strategy resulted in a number of both expected and surprising findings. The primary determinants for citations are found to be journal-level factors, accounting for 14% of the variances in citations of Internet studies. The impact of some, if not all, article-level factors on citations are moderated by journal-level factors. Internet studies, like studies in other areas (e.g., management, demography, and ecology), are cited more for rhetorical purposes, as suggested by the social constructivist approach, rather than as a form of reward, as argued by normative theory. The impact of time on citations varies across journals, which creates a growing “citation gap” for Internet studies published in journals with different characteristics. Keywords: Internet; bibliographic citations; hierarchical models