Abstract
The broad use of citations as evaluation basis has prompted the academic community to think about the mechanism of citations. In this paper, we propose a Bayesian network-based method for the analysis of the relationships among paper citation and its influencing factors. We investigate the factors that may be related to paper citation, calculate the factor values and determine the factor states. Then we design an amended K2 algorithm for Bayesian network structure learning to handle the situation that no strict sort exists among factors. At last, we use Bayesian network inference to analyse the relationships among paper citation and the influencing factors and present certain interesting findings. We believe the method can provide scholars with new intelligence analysis approach, either for citation analysis or other related issues like talent analysis, research areas analysis, and others.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
APS. APS Data Sets for Research [EB/OL]. [2022–07-20]. https://journals.aps.org/datasets.
By definition HIM should always be larger than HIF.
References
Abramo, G., D’Angelo, C. A., & Felici, G. (2019). Predicting publication long-term impact through a combination of early citations and journal impact factor. Journal of Informetrics, 13(1), 32–49.
Amjad, T., Shahid, N., Daud, A., & Khatoon, A. (2022). Citation burst prediction in a bibliometric network. Scientometrics, 127(5), 2773–2790.
Ante, L. (2022). The relationship between readability and scientific impact: Evidence from emerging technology discourses. Journal of Informetrics, 16(1), 101252.
Bornmann, L. (2011). Scientific peer review. Annual Review of Information Science and Technology, 45(1), 197–245.
Bornmann, L., & Leydesdorff, L. (2015). Does quality and content matter for citedness? A comparison with para-textual factors and over time. Journal of Informetrics, 9(3), 419–429.
Bu, Y., Waltman, L., & Huang, Y. (2021). A multidimensional framework for characterizing the citation impact of scientific publications. Quantitative Science Studies, 2(1), 155–183.
Cooper, G. F., & Herskovits, E. (1992). A Bayesian method for the induction of probabilistic networks from data. Machine Learning, 9(4), 309–347.
Didegah, F., & Thelwall, M. (2013). Which factors help authors produce the highest impact research? Collaboration, journal and document properties. Journal of Informetrics, 7(4), 861–873.
Flesch, R. (1948). A new readability yardstick. Journal of Applied Psychology, 32(3), 221.
Hurley, L. A., Ogier, A. L., & Torvik, V. I. (2013). Deconstructing the collaborative impact: Article and author characteristics that influence citation count. Proceedings of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 50(1), 1–10.
Ibáñez, A., Larranaga, P., & Bielza, C. (2011). Using Bayesian networks to discover relationships between bibliometric indices. A case study of computer science and artificial intelligence journals. Scientometrics, 89(2), 523–551.
Lei, L., & Yan, S. (2016). Readability and citations in information science: Evidence from abstracts and articles of four journals (2003–2012). Scientometrics, 108(3), 1155–1169.
Li, W., Aste, T., Caccioli, F., & Livan, G. (2019). Early coauthorship with top scientists predicts success in academic careers. Nature Communications, 10(1), 1–9.
McCabe, M. J., & Snyder, C. M. (2014). Identifying the effect of open access on citations using a panel of science journals. Economic Inquiry, 52(4), 1284–1300.
Onodera, N., & Yoshikane, F. (2015). Factors affecting citation rates of research articles. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 66(4), 739–764.
Pearl, J. (1988). Probabilistic Reasoning in Intelligent Systems: Networks of Plausible Inference. Morgan Kaufmann Publishers Inc., San Francisco, CA, USA.
Rigby, J. (2013). Looking for the impact of peer review: Does count of funding acknowledgements really predict research impact? Scientometrics, 94(1), 57–73.
Ruan, X., Zhu, Y., Li, J., & Cheng, Y. (2020). Predicting the citation counts of individual papers via a BP neural network. Journal of Informetrics, 14(3), 101039.
Shen, H. W., & Barabási, A. L. (2014). Collective credit allocation in science. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 111(34), 12325–12330.
Stegehuis, C., Litvak, N., & Waltman, L. (2015). Predicting the long-term citation impact of recent publications. Journal of Informetrics, 9(3), 642–657.
Stremersch, S., Camacho, N., Vanneste, S., & Verniers, I. (2015). Unraveling scientific impact: Citation types in marketing journals. International Journal of Research in Marketing, 32(1), 64–77.
Tahamtan, I., & Bornmann, L. (2018a). Core elements in the process of citing publications: Conceptual overview of the literature. Journal of Informetrics, 12(1), 203–216.
Tahamtan, I., & Bornmann, L. (2018b). Creativity in science and the link to cited references: Is the creative potential of papers reflected in their cited references? Journal of Informetrics, 12(3), 906–930.
Wang, F., Fan, Y., Zeng, A., & Di, Z. (2019a). Can we predict ESI highly cited publications? Scientometrics, 118(1), 109–125.
Wang, M., Wang, Z., & Chen, G. (2019b). Which can better predict the future success of articles? Bibliometric Indices or Alternative Metrics. Scientometrics, 119(3), 1575–1595.
Wang, M., Yu, G., Xu, J., He, H., Yu, D., & An, S. (2012). Development a case-based classifier for predicting highly cited papers. Journal of Informetrics, 6(4), 586–599.
Wu, L., Wang, D., & Evans, J. A. (2019). Large teams develop and small teams disrupt science and technology. Nature, 566(7744), 378–382.
Xie, J., Gong, K., Li, J., Ke, Q., Kang, H., & Cheng, Y. (2019). A probe into 66 factors which are possibly associated with the number of citations an article received. Scientometrics, 119(3), 1429–1454.
Yu, T., Yu, G., Li, P. Y., & Wang, L. (2014). Citation impact prediction for scientific papers using stepwise regression analysis. Scientometrics, 101(2), 1233–1252.
Zhang, L., & Guo, H. (2006). Introduction to Bayesian Networks. Science Press.
Zhang, X., Xie, Q., & Song, M. (2021). Measuring the impact of novelty, bibliometric, and academic-network factors on citation count using a neural network. Journal of Informetrics, 15(2), 101140.
Zhou, J., Zeng, A., Fan, Y., & Di, Z. (2018). The representative works of scientists. Scientometrics, 117(3), 1721–1732.
Acknowledgements
The work of this paper is supported by the Chinese Academy of Sciences Literature and Information capacity building project, Youth Innovation Promotion Association of Chinese Academy of Sciences (No. 2019176).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflict of interest
The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare that are relevant to the content of this article.
Rights and permissions
Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
About this article
Cite this article
Sun, M., Ma, T., Zhou, L. et al. Analysis of the relationships among paper citation and its influencing factors: a Bayesian network-based approach. Scientometrics 128, 3017–3033 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-023-04697-3
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-023-04697-3