Author Judgements about Works They Cite: Three Studies from Psychology Journals

Abstract

Many researchers use citation counts to study science. But few studies explore the meanings of those citations. Oddly enough, least explored of all are judgements by the authors who cite them. This paper describes three empirical studies of citations in psychology journals that explored these judgements. In general, highly cited scholarly works are rated as exemplars and as being of higher quality, although there were differences between older and newer works in these ratings. More interestingly, works rated as highly creative had mixed fates. Creative works were judged to be higher quality exemplars; but creative works also had the lowest citation counts once quality and exemplar ratings were taken into account. It may be that some creative works fit poorly into existing conceptual or methodological structures, and so are used less.