Counting citations in texts rather than reference lists to improve the accuracy of assessing scientific contribution Citation frequency of individual articles in other papers more fairly measures their scientific contribution than mere presence in reference lists

摘要

Being cited is a popular measure of the scientific contribution of a scientific paper and consequently a well-used measure of the academic reputation of the authors, their institutions, and the journal that published it [1–6]. In common citation index systems, like ISI Web of Science, Scopus, and Google Scholar, all citations are treated equally. However, all authors would agree that references listed in the bibliography of a paper often differ greatly in their contribution to that paper. Some references are indispensable; they directly stimulate hypotheses or provide essential methods. By contrast, some other references are cited just for background information or are incidentally mentioned. An early analysis of 575 references in 30 articles published in Physical Review has shown that about 40% of the references are perfunctory, which raises doubts about the use of citations as a measure of scientific contribution [7].