Reward or persuasion? The battle to define the meaning of a citation
Abstract
The history and development of the Science Citation Index (SCI) is an example of the power of users in defining and influencing the development of a new technology. The SCI was developed as a tool for the historian of science for the purpose of tracing the history of ideas, but it was appropriated by users for purposes for which it was unintended – as a tool for evaluating the literature, individuals, institutions, and countries. The development of a citation tool gave rise to a debate over what is actually measured by citations. The citation‐as‐reward camp views citations as indicators of quality and impact, whereas the citation‐as‐persuasion camp views citations as no more than rhetorical devices. While neither view can fully explain how authors use citations, citation‐as‐reward prevails as the dominant interpretation.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
The use of citations in research evaluation contexts has its roots in citation theories proposed in the past.
“The use of citations in these and similar contexts has its roots in citation theories, which have been proposed in the past (see an overview in Cronin, 1984, Nicolaisen, 2007, Davis, 2009, Moed, 2005).”
From Core Elements in the Process of Citing Publications: Conceptual Overview of the Literature (2018) · cites this paper as Davis, 2009
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Core Elements in the Process of Citing Publications: Conceptual Overview of the Literature
Tahamtan, I., & Bornmann, L. (2018) · Journal of Informetrics · doi:10.1016/j.joi.2018.01.002 · Cited by 149 · see citing works
Citation-Based Journal Rankings: Key Questions, Metrics, and Data Sources
Walters, W. H. (2017) · IEEE Access · doi:10.1109/access.2017.2761400 · Cited by 56 · see citing works
- Authors
- DAVIS, P. M.
- Affiliations
- Cornell University (US)
- Corresponding author
- DAVIS, Philip M.
- ORCID
- DAVIS, Philip M.
- Venue
- Learned Publishing
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Published
- 2009-01
- Volume
- 22
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 5-11
- ISSN
- 0953-1513 (ISSN-L)
- 1741-4857
- OpenAlex
- W2050592278
- Cited by
- 70
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 2 · 2025: 2 · 2022: 16 · 2021: 6 · 2020: 3 · 2019: 4 · 2018: 6 · 2017: 6 · 2016: 3 · 2015: 2 · 2014: 6 · 2013: 1 · 2012: 6
- FWCI
- 2.67
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Learned Publishing (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Statistics, Probability and Uncertainty › scientometrics and bibliometrics research
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Information Systems › Library Science and Information
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Information Systems › Web visibility and informetrics
- Keywords
- Science Citation Index, citation analysis, bibliometric analysis, intellectual history
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
