Analysis of the influence of the two types of the journal articles; theoretical and empirical on the impact factor of a journal

Abstract

The study discusses the necessity to analyze the influence of theoretical and empirical types of journal articles on the citation impact of Spanish psychology journals. Three of the most representative Spanish psychology journals were selected for the purposes of this study: Papeles del Psicólogo, Análisis y Modificación de Conducta and Psicothema. Twenty-three psychology journals in Spanish were used as source journals. Altogether, there were sixty-seven issues reviewed for the references and ninety-three issues for the articles. The bibliometricanalysis was conducted by six highly trained psychologists. The results demonstrated differences regarding the percentages of empirical and theoretical articles published in the three examined journals and the number of citations received by them based on the article type. When normalizing the results according to the number of theoretical and empirical articles that were published, it becomes evident that the theoretical articles receive on average twice as many references as the empirical ones. We discuss the importance of this effect on the comparison of journals based on their citation impact and show the evidence that it is only valid to compare journals which publish a similar percentage of theoretical and empirical articles.

Análisis bibliométrico de la Revista de Investigación Educativa (2000-2012)

“…Este resultado apoya el estudio de Buela-Casal et al (2009), donde se verificó que los artículos teó-ricos reciben más citas que los empíricos y por ello aportan más al Factor de Impacto de las revistas pertinentes.…”

“…Cada año se publican numerosos estudios bibliométricos, tanto de revistas relacionadas con el ámbito de la educación (Ariza, Granados, Ramiro y Gómez-García, 2011; Gómez-García, Ramiro, Ariza y Granados, 2012; Granados, Ariza, Gómez-García y Ramiro, 2011) como de otras disciplinas (Zych y Quevedo-Blasco, 2011). También existen otras publicaciones en las que se analizan revistas indexadas en la Web of Science (WoS) y el Journal Citation Reports (JCR) reconocidas por su prestigio (e.g., Musi-Lechuga, Olivas-Ávila y Castro, 2011a; Navarrete-Cortés, Fernández-López, López-Baena, Quevedo-Blasco y Buela-Casal, 2010; Navarrete-Cortés, Quevedo-Blasco, Chaichio-Moreno, Ríos y Buela-Casal, 2009;Quevedo-Blasco, Díaz-Piedra y Guglielmi, 2009;Quevedo-Blasco y López-López, 2010, ya que esto representa un indicio de calidad de las publicaciones pertenecientes a determinadas áreas, aunque no es el único factor que indica la calidad de una revista (Buela-Casal y Ruiz-Pérez, Delgado y Jiménez-Contreras, 2010).…”

A survey of Chinese interpreting studies: who influences who …and why?

“…Using an all-but-exhaustive collection of citation data, we ask how authors interact, how we can characterize who is influential, and what being influential means. These questions have long attracted attention in the scientific community (see for example Van Dalen & Henkens, 2001;Haslam et al, 2008;Buela-Casal et al, 2009;Chen & Redner, 2010;Ravallion & Wagstaff, 2011), partly in consequence of Kuhn's (1970) seminal work on the nature of science, in which he emphasizes the importance of adopting a data-driven approach to analyzing the structure of the scientific community, and partly because academic authorities are ever vigilant to ensure that the investments they make in their researchers' projects are justified by the results-that they are, in short, spending their money wisely.…”

“…A handful of researchers have already explored the issue of what makes one article influential and another not. Buela-Casal et al (2009) examined the relative influence of theoretical and empirical papers in three Spanish psychology journals, concluding that the former type received twice as many citations as the latter. Haslam et al (2008) studied the citation data for 308 articles in social-personality psychology, and found the following factors particularly strong for predicting an article's impact: (1) the reputation of the first-listed author; (2) the presence of a senior colleague's name among a new author's collaborators; and (3) a journal's ranking.…”

Una década de la Revista Española de Orientación y Psicopedagogía: un análisis bibliométrico de su evolución / A decade of the Revista Española de Orientación y Psicopedagogía: a bibliometric analysis of its evolution.

“…Este hecho coincide con la mejor posición de la revista en toda su historia. En relación a este planteamiento, se puede destacar un estudio de Buela-Casal et al (2009) en el que se analiza la influencia de los artículos teóricos y empíricos en el factor de impacto de una revista y se encuentran evidencias de que los artículos teóricos reciben más citas que los empíricos. A partir de 2008, baja considerablemente el número de citas en los tres años posteriores, pero esta cantidad no es trascendente ya que aún no ha pasado el tiempo necesario para poder realizar un recuento fiable.…”