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To include or not: the role of review papers in citation-based analysis

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Abstract

Citation information helps researchers observe the evolution of the knowledge. In scientific publications, a review paper discusses a professional field and thus tends to have more citations than general papers do. This study investigated whether specific characteristics of review papers induce different results in citation-based analysis. From the Scopus database, we collected scientific publications in a specific research field, e-tourism, to examine the role of review papers in citation-based analysis. The dataset includes 1421 publications covering the period from the 1988–2015. Empirical statistics show that review papers’ specific citation patterns influence citation analysis. First, in the main path analysis, the result expresses review papers’ integrative role in linking papers from diverse perspectives toward a clear mainstream topic. Second, in a well-defined research context, review papers introduce bias in citation-based clustering analysis because the specific high citation pattern in review papers obfuscates the grouping process. When using citation information in analysis, scholars must consider the purpose of the study and treat review papers distinctly to avoid bias when using certain analysis methods and datasets.

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Notes

  1. In this study, to identify ‘review’ papers, we consider whether the content of a certain study involves an overall discussion of a theory’s (or a research field’s) development. Thus, in this study, the definition of a ‘review’ paper is not limited to that used in the Scopus database. Additional details are discussed in Sect. 3.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank anonymous reviewers for their constructive suggestions that have much improved the accuracy and readability of this article. This study is partially supported by Taiwan’s Ministry of Science and Technology grant: MOST 104-2410-M-011-027-MY2 and MOST105-2410-H-011-021-MY3.

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Correspondence to Mei Hsiu-Ching Ho.

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Ho, M.HC., Liu, J.S. & Chang, K.CT. To include or not: the role of review papers in citation-based analysis. Scientometrics 110, 65–76 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-016-2158-0

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