Articles in high-impact journals are by definition more highly cited on
average. But are they cited more often because the articles are somehow
"better"? Or are they cited more often simply because they appeared in a
high-impact journal? Although some evidence suggests the latter the causal
relationship is not clear. We here compare citations of published journal
articles to citations of their preprint versions to uncover the causal
mechanism. We build on an earlier model to infer the causal effect of journals
on citations. We find evidence for both effects. We show that high-impact
journals seem to select articles that tend to attract more citations. At the
same time, we find that high-impact journals augment the citation rate of
published articles. Our results yield a deeper understanding of the role of
journals in the research system. The use of journal metrics in research
evaluation has been increasingly criticised in recent years and article-level
citations are sometimes suggested as an alternative. Our results show that
removing impact factors from evaluation does not negate the influence of
journals. This insight has important implications for changing practices of
research evaluation.
Description
Inferring the causal effect of journals on citations
%0 Generic
%1 traag2019inferring
%A Traag, V. A.
%D 2019
%K Zeitschrift impact_factor
%T Inferring the causal effect of journals on citations
%U http://arxiv.org/abs/1912.08648
%X Articles in high-impact journals are by definition more highly cited on
average. But are they cited more often because the articles are somehow
"better"? Or are they cited more often simply because they appeared in a
high-impact journal? Although some evidence suggests the latter the causal
relationship is not clear. We here compare citations of published journal
articles to citations of their preprint versions to uncover the causal
mechanism. We build on an earlier model to infer the causal effect of journals
on citations. We find evidence for both effects. We show that high-impact
journals seem to select articles that tend to attract more citations. At the
same time, we find that high-impact journals augment the citation rate of
published articles. Our results yield a deeper understanding of the role of
journals in the research system. The use of journal metrics in research
evaluation has been increasingly criticised in recent years and article-level
citations are sometimes suggested as an alternative. Our results show that
removing impact factors from evaluation does not negate the influence of
journals. This insight has important implications for changing practices of
research evaluation.
@misc{traag2019inferring,
abstract = {Articles in high-impact journals are by definition more highly cited on
average. But are they cited more often because the articles are somehow
"better"? Or are they cited more often simply because they appeared in a
high-impact journal? Although some evidence suggests the latter the causal
relationship is not clear. We here compare citations of published journal
articles to citations of their preprint versions to uncover the causal
mechanism. We build on an earlier model to infer the causal effect of journals
on citations. We find evidence for both effects. We show that high-impact
journals seem to select articles that tend to attract more citations. At the
same time, we find that high-impact journals augment the citation rate of
published articles. Our results yield a deeper understanding of the role of
journals in the research system. The use of journal metrics in research
evaluation has been increasingly criticised in recent years and article-level
citations are sometimes suggested as an alternative. Our results show that
removing impact factors from evaluation does not negate the influence of
journals. This insight has important implications for changing practices of
research evaluation.},
added-at = {2019-12-21T19:34:24.000+0100},
author = {Traag, V. A.},
biburl = {https://www.bibsonomy.org/bibtex/2383c909b4fd2e7a677a0f76a2f3c76ad/wdees},
description = {Inferring the causal effect of journals on citations},
interhash = {d7ab244b5bad455f8fb0b3d3007a8a13},
intrahash = {383c909b4fd2e7a677a0f76a2f3c76ad},
keywords = {Zeitschrift impact_factor},
note = {cite arxiv:1912.08648},
timestamp = {2019-12-21T19:34:24.000+0100},
title = {Inferring the causal effect of journals on citations},
url = {http://arxiv.org/abs/1912.08648},
year = 2019
}