Scientists Scratch Each Others Backs

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Scientists Scratch Each Others Backs

Monday, September 6th, 2010 | blogging

Nature News reports on an easy way to boost a paper′s citations: include more references.

A long reference list at the end of a research paper may be the key to ensuring that it is well cited, according to an analysis of 100 years’ worth of papers published in the journal Science.

The research suggests that scientists who reference the work of their peers are more likely to find their own work referenced in turn, and the effect is on the rise, with a single extra reference in an article now producing, on average, a whole additional citation for the referencing paper.

“There is a ridiculously strong relationship between the number of citations a paper receives and its number of references,” Gregory Webster, the psychologist at the University of Florida in Gainesville who conducted the research, told Nature. “If you want to get more cited, the answer could be to cite more people.”

This is akin to blogrolling, the citing of others in the hope that one gets cited in return.

Although the results represent a correlation only, and thus don′t prove causation, the study calls into question whether judging a paper by the number of its citations really shows that the paper is important. Highly-cited papers may be that way only because they have included more references, not because of their intrinsic importance. Therefore, our view of what constitutes the most important science being done today, as well as who the important scientists are, could be highly skewed, giving a false depiction of scientific progress.