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Citation Characteristics of Non-Citable Documents and Contributions to Journal Impact Factor


Affiliations
1 Henan Research Center for Science Journals, Management Institute, Xinxiang Medical University, Xinxiang 453003, Henan Province, China
2 Management Institute, Xinxiang Medical University, Xinxiang 453003, Henan Province, China
 

Journal impact factor (JIF) is defined as the number of citations within a given year to items published by a journal in the preceding two years, divided by the number of citable items published by the journal during those two years. However, the ‘citable documents’ include only articles and reviews, and the ‘non-citable documents’ (NCDs) actually can be and are often cited, and some may have higher citations. Here we explore the cited characteristics of NCDs and their contributions to JIF. All data were taken from the Web of Science database. The results showed that 315,017 NCDs (including editorials, letters, reprints, news items, corrections, biographical items, and book reviews) could be retrieved from 2012 to 2013. There were 160,580 editorials and 81,652 letters with the respective citations of 98,434 and 40,692 in 2014; the citations per item were 0.613 and 0.498 respectively. The contributions of these two types of NCDs to JIF are obvious. Of the 64 journals with NCDs ≥ 500 or NCDs ≥ 10 while the citations ≥ 20, 19 showed contributions of NCDs to more than 20%. Although some journals publish more NCDs, their contributions to JIF are not obvious; only for a few journals are the NCDs contributions to JIF higher. These are mainly medical journals.

Keywords

Citation Characteristics, Impact Factor, Journals, Non-Citable Documents.
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  • Citation Characteristics of Non-Citable Documents and Contributions to Journal Impact Factor

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Authors

Xue-Li Liu
Henan Research Center for Science Journals, Management Institute, Xinxiang Medical University, Xinxiang 453003, Henan Province, China
Ya-Hui Wei
Management Institute, Xinxiang Medical University, Xinxiang 453003, Henan Province, China
Shuang-Shuang Gai
Henan Research Center for Science Journals, Management Institute, Xinxiang Medical University, Xinxiang 453003, Henan Province, China

Abstract


Journal impact factor (JIF) is defined as the number of citations within a given year to items published by a journal in the preceding two years, divided by the number of citable items published by the journal during those two years. However, the ‘citable documents’ include only articles and reviews, and the ‘non-citable documents’ (NCDs) actually can be and are often cited, and some may have higher citations. Here we explore the cited characteristics of NCDs and their contributions to JIF. All data were taken from the Web of Science database. The results showed that 315,017 NCDs (including editorials, letters, reprints, news items, corrections, biographical items, and book reviews) could be retrieved from 2012 to 2013. There were 160,580 editorials and 81,652 letters with the respective citations of 98,434 and 40,692 in 2014; the citations per item were 0.613 and 0.498 respectively. The contributions of these two types of NCDs to JIF are obvious. Of the 64 journals with NCDs ≥ 500 or NCDs ≥ 10 while the citations ≥ 20, 19 showed contributions of NCDs to more than 20%. Although some journals publish more NCDs, their contributions to JIF are not obvious; only for a few journals are the NCDs contributions to JIF higher. These are mainly medical journals.

Keywords


Citation Characteristics, Impact Factor, Journals, Non-Citable Documents.

References





DOI: https://doi.org/10.18520/cs%2Fv114%2Fi07%2F1423-1429