Who Cites What in Computer Science? - Analysing Citation Patterns Across Conference Rank and Gender

Abstract

Citations are a means to refer to previous, relevant scientific bodies of work. However, little is known about how citations behave with respect to venue reputation. Do A* papers get more often cited by C papers or vice versa? What is the source and sink of a citation in terms of venue reputation? In this work, we investigate this issue by analysing the DBLP database of computer science publications, utilizing rank information from the CORE database. Our analysis shows that authors tend to cite publications from the same or higher ranked venues more often than from lower tier venues. Self-citations, on the contrary, are especially focused on same-tier venues. The gender of the first author does not seem to have any impact on the citations from and to differently ranked mediums.