Abstract
Citation analysis has been a prevalent method in the field of information science, especially research on bibliometrics and evaluation, but its validity relies heavily on how the citations are treated. It is essential to study authors’ citing motivations to identify citations with different values and significance. This study applied a meta-synthesis approach to establish a new holistic classification of citation motivations based on previous studies. First, we used a four-step search strategy to identify related articles on authors’ citing motivations. Thirty-eight primary studies were included after the inclusion and exclusion criteria were applied and appraised using the Evidence-based Librarianship checklist. Next, we decoded and recoded the citing motivations found in the included studies, following the standard procedures of meta-synthesis. Thirty-five descriptive concepts of citation motivations emerged, which were then synthesized into 13 analytic themes. As a result, we proposed a comprehensive classification, including two main categories of citing reasons, i.e., “scientific motivations” and “tactical motivations.” Generally, the citations driven by scientific motivations serve as a rhetorical function, while tactical motivations are social or benefit-oriented and not easily captured through text-parsing. Our synthesis contributes to bibliometric and scientific evaluation theory. The synthesized classification also provides a comprehensive and unified annotation schema for citation classification and helps identify the useful mentions of a reference in a citing paper to optimize citation- based measurements.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Ajzen, I. (1991). The theory of planned behavior. Organizational Behavior & Human Decision Processes, 50(2), 179–211. https://doi.org/10.1016/0749-5978(91)90020-T.
Altidor-Brooks, A. G. (2014). Citation use and identity construction: Discourse appropriation in advanced academic literacy practices (Order No. 1603891). Available from ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global A&I: The Humanities and Social Sciences Collection. (1739002297). https://search.proquest.com/docview/1739002297?accountid=41288
Bakhti, K., Niu, Z., Nyamawe, A. S. (2018). A new scheme for citation classification based on convolutional neural networks. In: Proceedings of the International Conference on Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering. doi: https://doi.org/10.18293/SEKE2018-141
Bonzi, S., & Snyder, H. W. (1991). Motivations for citation: A comparison of self citation and citation to others. Scientometrics, 21(2), 245–254. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02017571.
Bornmann, L., & Daniel, H. D. (2008). What do citation counts measure? A review of studies on citing behavior. Journal of Documentation, 64(1), 45–80. https://doi.org/10.1108/00220410810844150.
Boyack, K. W., Van Eck, N. J., Colavizza, G., & Waltman, L. (2018). Characterizing in-text citations in scientific articles: A large-scale analysis. Journal of Informetrics, 12(1), 59–73. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joi.2017.11.005.
Brooks, T. A. (1985). Private acts and public objects: An investigation of citer motivations. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 36(4), 223–229. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.4630360402.
Brooks, T. A. (1986). Evidence of complex citer motivations. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 37(1), 34–36. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.4630370106.
Cano, V. (1989). Citation behavior: Classification, utility, and location. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 40(4), 284–290. https://doi.org/10.1002/(SICI)1097-4571(198907)40:4%3c284::AID-ASI10%3e3.0.CO;2-Z.
Case, D. O., & Higgins, G. M. (2000). How can we investigate citation behavior? A study of reasons for citing literature in communication. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 51(7), 635–645. https://doi.org/10.1002/(SICI)1097-4571(2000)51:7%3c635::AID-ASI6%3e3.0.CO;2-H.
Case, D. O., & Miller, J. B. (2011). Do bibliometricians cite differently from other scholars? Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 62(3), 421–431. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.21466.
Chang, Y. W. (2013). The influence of Taylor’s paper, question-negotiation and information-seeking in Libraries. Information Processing and Management, 49(5), 983–994. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ipm.2013.03.003.
Chubin, D. E., & Moitra, S. D. (1975). Content analysis of references: Adjunct or alternative to citation counting? Social Studies of Science, 5(4), 423–441. https://doi.org/10.1177/030631277500500403.
Ding, Y., Liu, X., Guo, C., & Cronin, B. (2013). The distribution of references across texts: Some implications for citation analysis. Journal of Informetrics, 7(3), 583–592. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joi.2013.03.003.
Ding, Y., Zhang, G., Chambers, T., Song, M., Wang, X., & Zhai, C. (2014). Content-based citation analysis: The next generation of citation analysis. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 65(9), 1820–1833. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.23256.
Erikson, M. G., & Erlandson, P. (2014). A taxonomy of motives to cite. Social Studies of Science, 44(4), 625–637. https://doi.org/10.1177/0306312714522871.
Fazel, I., & Shi, L. (2015). Citation behaviors of graduate students in grant proposal writing. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 20, 203–214. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2015.10.002.
Finfgeld-Connett, D. (2018). A guide to qualitative meta-synthesis. NewYork: Routledge.
Frost, C. O. (1979). The use of citations in literary research: A preliminary classification of citation functions. The Library Quarterly, 49(4), 399–414. https://doi.org/10.1086/600930.
Garfield, E. (1979). Is citation analysis a legitimate evaluation tool? Scientometrics, 1(4), 359–375. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02019306.
Glänzel, W., & Thijs, B. (2004). Does co-authorship inflate the share of self-citations? Scientometrics, 61(3), 395–404. https://doi.org/10.1023/B:SCIE.0000045117.13348.b1.
Glynn, L. (2006). A critical appraisal tool for library and information research. Library Hi Tech, 24(3), 387–399. https://doi.org/10.1108/07378830610692154.
Harwood, N. (2009). An interview-based study of the functions of citations in academic writing across two disciplines. Journal of Pragmatics, 41(3), 497–518. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2008.06.001.
Hernández-Alvarez, M., & Gomez, J. M. (2016). Survey about citation context analysis: Tasks, techniques, and resources. Natural Language Engineering, 22(3), 327–349. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1351324915000388.
Hernández-Alvarez, M., Gomez Soriano, J. M., & Martínez-Barco, P. (2017). Citation function, polarity and influence classification. Natural Language Engineering, 23(4), 561–588. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1351324916000346.
Hu, Z., Lin, G., Sun, T., & Hou, H. (2017). Understanding multiply mentioned references. Journal of Informetrics, 11(4), 948–958. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joi.2017.08.004.
Jha, R., Jbara, A., Qazvinian, V., & Radev, D. (2017). NLP-driven citation analysis for scientometrics. Natural Language Engineering, 23(1), 93–130. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1351324915000443.
Jones, T. H., Donovan, C., & Hanney, S. (2012). Tracing the wider impacts of biomedical research: A literature search to develop a novel citation categorisation technique. Scientometrics, 93(1), 125–134. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-012-0642-8.
Jones, T. H., & Hanney, S. (2016). Tracing the indirect societal impacts of biomedical research: Development and piloting of a technique based on citations. Scientometrics, 107(3), 975–1003. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-016-1895-4.
Kaplan, N. (1965). The norms of citation behavior: Prolegomena to the footnote. American Documentation, 16(3), 179–184. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.5090160305.
Kwan, B. S. C., & Chan, H. (2014). An investigation of source use in the results and the closing sections of empirical articles in Information systems: In search of a functional-semantic citation typology for pedagogical purposes. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 14, 29–47. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2013.11.004.
Lievers, W. B., & Pilkey, A. K. (2012). Characterizing the frequency of repeated citations: The effects of journal, subject area, and self-citation. Information Processing & Management, 48(6), 1116–1123. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ipm.2012.01.009.
Lin, C. S. (2018). An analysis of citation functions in the humanities and social sciences research from the perspective of problematic citation analysis assumptions. Scientometrics, 116(2), 797–813. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-018-2770-2.
Lin, C. S., Chen, Y. F., & Chang, C. Y. (2013). Citation functions in social sciences and humanities: Preliminary results from a citation context analysis of Taiwan’s history research journals. Proceedings of the ASIST Annual Meeting. https://doi.org/10.1002/meet.14505001134.
Lipetz, B. A. (1965). Improvement of the selectivity of citation indexes to science literature through inclusion of citation relationship indicators. American Documentation, 16(2), 81–90. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.5090160207.
Liu, M. (1993). A study of citing motivations of Chinese scientists. Journal of Information Science, 19(1), 13–23. https://doi.org/10.1177/016555159301900103.
Ma, F., & Wu, Y. S. (2009). A survey study on motivations for citation. Journal of Intelligence, 28(6), 9–14.
Mansourizadeh, K., & Ahmad, U. K. (2011). Citation practices among non-native expert and novice scientific writers. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 10(3), 152–161. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2011.03.004.
McCain, K. W., & Turner, K. (1989). Citation context analysis and aging patterns of journal articles in molecular genetics. Scientometrics, 17, 127–163. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02017729.
Moravcsik, M. J., & Murugesan, P. (1975). Some results on the function and quality of citations. Social Studies of Science, 5(1), 86–92. https://doi.org/10.1177/030631277500500106.
Nicolaisen, J. (2007). Citation analysis. Annual Review of Information Science and Technology, 41(1), 609–641. https://doi.org/10.1002/aris.2007.1440410120.
Oppenheim, C. (1996). Do citations count? Citation indexing and the research assessment exercise (RAE). Serials, 9(2), 155–161.
Oppenheim, C., & Renn, S. P. (1978). Highly cited old papers and the reasons why they continue to be cited. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 29(5), 225–231. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.4630290504.
Peritz, B. C. (1983). A classification of citation roles for the social sciences and related fields. Scientometrics, 5(5), 303–312. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02147226.
Petrić, B. (2007). Rhetorical functions of citations in high- and low-rated master’s theses. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 6(3), 238–253. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2007.09.002.
Petrić, B., & Harwood, N. (2013). Task requirements, task representation, and self-reported citation functions: An exploratory study of a successful L2 student’s writing. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 12(2), 110–124. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2013.01.002.
Prabha, C. G. (1983). Some aspects of citation behavior: A pilot-study in business administration. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 34(3), 202–206. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.4630340305.
Samraj, B. (2013). Form and function of citations in discussion sections of master’s theses and research articles. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 12(4), 299–310. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2013.09.001.
Shadish, W. R., Tolliver, D., Gray, M., & Gupta, S. K. S. (1995). Author judgements about works they cite: Three studies from psychology journals. Social Studies of Science, 25(3), 477–498. https://doi.org/10.1177/030631295025003003.
Shi, L. (2010). Textual appropriation and citing behaviors of university undergraduates. Applied Linguistics, 31(1), 1–24. https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/amn045.
Small, H. (2004). On the shoulders of robert merton: Towards a normative theory of citation. Scientometrics, 60(1), 71–79. https://doi.org/10.1023/B:SCIE.0000027310.68393.bc.
Spiegel-Rösing, I. (1977). Science studies: Bibliometric and content analysis. Social Studies of Science, 7(1), 97–113. https://doi.org/10.1177/030631277700700111.
Tahamtan, I., & Bornmann, L. (2018). Core elements in the process of citing publications: Conceptual overview of the literature. Journal of Informetrics, 12(1), 203–216. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joi.2018.01.002.
Tang, R., & Safer, M. A. (2008). Author-rated importance of cited references in biology and psychology publications. Journal of Documentation, 64(2), 246–272. https://doi.org/10.1108/00220410810858047.
Taşkın, Z., & Al, U. (2018). A content-based citation analysis study based on text categorization. Scientometrics, 114(1), 335–357. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-017-2560-2.
Tasy, M. Y. (2006). Journal self-citation study for semiconductor literature: Synchronous and diachronous approach. Information Processing and Management, 42(6), 1567–1577. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ipm.2006.03.020.
Teufel, S., Siddharthan, A., & Tidhar, D. (2006). Automatic classification of citation function. In: Proceedings of the Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing.
Thelwall, M. (2019). Should citations be counted separately from each originating section? Journal of Informetrics, 13(2), 658–678. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joi.2019.03.009.
Thompson, P. (2001). A pedagogically-motivated corpus-based examination of PhD theses: Macrostructure, citation practices and uses of modal verbs (Order No. U148090). Available from ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global A&I: The Humanities and Social Sciences Collection. (301595734). https://search.proquest.com/docview/301595734?accountid=41288
Tuarob, S., Mitra, P., & Giles, C. L. (2013). A classification scheme for algorithm citation function in scholarly works. Proceedings of the ACM/IEEE Joint Conference on Digital Libraries. https://doi.org/10.1145/2467696.2467754.
Vinkler, P. (1987). A quasi-quantitative citation model. Scientometrics, 12, 47–72. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02016689.
Wang, X., Weaver, D. B., Li, X., & Zhang, Y. (2016). In Butler (1980) we trust? Typology of citer motivations. Annals of Tourism Research, 61, 213–267. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.annals.2016.07.004.
White, M. D., & Wang, P. (1997). A qualitative study of citing behavior: Contributions, criteria, and metalevel documentation concerns. Library Quarterly, 67(2), 122–154. https://doi.org/10.1086/629929.
Zhao, D., & Strotmann, A. (2020). Deep and narrow impact: Introducing location filtered citation counting. Scientometrics, 122(1), 503–517. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-019-03280-z.
Zhu, X., Turney, P., Lemire, D., & Vellino, A. (2015). Measuring academic influence: Not all citations are equal. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 66(2), 408–427. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.23179.
Ziman, J. M. (1968). Public knowledge: An essay concerning the social dimension of science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Funding
This work was supported by the National Social Science Foundation of China Grant (17BTQ014).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflict of interest
The author have declared no conflict of interest.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Lyu, D., Ruan, X., Xie, J. et al. The classification of citing motivations: a meta-synthesis. Scientometrics 126, 3243–3264 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-021-03908-z
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-021-03908-z