High-Ranked Social Science Journal Articles Can Be Identified from Early Citation Information

Abstract

Do citations accumulate too slowly in the social sciences to be used to assess the quality of recent articles? I investigate whether this is the case using citation data for all articles in economics and political science published in 2006 and indexed in the Web of Science. I find that citations in the first two years after publication explain more than half of the variation in cumulative citations received over a longer period. Journal impact factors improve the correlation between the predicted and actual future ranks of journal articles when using citation data from 2006 alone but the effect declines sharply thereafter. Finally, more than half of the papers in the top 20% in 2012 were already in the top 20% in the year of publication (2006).

Revisiting the scientometric conceptualization of impact and its measurement

“…Bornmann, Leydesdorff, and Wang (2014) also found that IF can be a significant co-variate in predicting the citation impact of individual publications. Stern (2014) confirmed that in the social sciences, IF improves correlation between the predicted and actual ranks by citations, when applied in the "zero" year of publication and up to one year afterwards. Stegehuis, Litvak, and Waltman (2015) proposed a model to predict a probability distribution for the future number of citations of a publication using the IF of the hosting journal and the number of citations received by the publication within one year of appearance.…”

Predicting publication long-term impact through a combination of early citations and journal impact factor

“…Bornmann, Leydesdorff, and Wang (2014) also found that IF can be a significant covariate in predicting the citation impact of individual publications. Stern (2014) confirmed that in the social sciences, IF improves correlation between predicted and actual ranks by citations, when applied in the "zero" year of publication and up to one year afterwards. Stegehuis, Litvak, and Waltman (2015) proposed a model to predict a probability distribution for the future number of citations of a publication, using the IF of the hosting journal and the number of citations received by the publication within one year of appearance.…”

Citation‐Capture Rates for Economics Journals: Do they Differ from Other Disciplines and Does it Matter?

“…For example, see Nederhof & van Raan, 1993;Adams, 2005;Van Leeuwen, 2006;Levitt & Thelwall, 2008, 2011Anderson & Tressler, 2013;Tressler & Anderson, 2012;Bertocchi et al, 2013;Wang, 2013;Stern, 2014;and Burns & Stern, 2015. In general, the findings provide some support for using direct citation counts to papers in the sciences, but little support for doing so in the social sciences. A notable exception is the recent work by Stern (2014) and Burns and Stern (2015). For example, Stern (2014) suggests that a two-to three-year citation window is adequate for predicting longer term citation rankings of journal articles in economics.…”

“…A notable exception is the recent work by Stern (2014) and Burns and Stern (2015). For example, Stern (2014) suggests that a two-to three-year citation window is adequate for predicting longer term citation rankings of journal articles in economics.…”