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The relationship between authors’ bibliographic coupling and citation exchange: analyzing disciplinary differences

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Abstract

Author bibliographic coupling (ABC) is extended from the bibliographic coupling concept and holds the view that two authors with more common references are more related and have more similar research interests. This study aims to examine the association between author bibliographic coupling strength and citation exchange in eighteen subject areas. The results show that there is no significant difference in the associations found across the subject areas. The correlation is positive and significant between the two factors in all subject areas, although it is stronger in some subject areas, such as Biomedical Engineering, than in others. For a closer investigation of the association between bibliographic coupling strength and citations exchanged between pairs of authors and also of ABC networks, a sample of highly cited authors in one of the subfields of Information Science & Library Science, imetrics, was taken into account. The correlation is also highly significant among imetricians. This finding confirms Merton’s norm of universalism versus constructivists’ particularism. The investigation of thirty highly cited imetricians shows that Thelwall, M is in strong bibliographic coupling and citation relationships with the majority of the authors in the network. He and Bar-Ilan have the strongest ABC and citation relationships in the network. Rousseau, R, Glanzel, W., Bornmann, L, Bar-Ilan, J, and Leydesdorff, L are also in strong ABC relationships with each other as well as other authors in the network.

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Notes

  1. http://incites.isiknowledge.com/common/help/h_field_category_oecd.html.

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Acknowledgments

This study is an extended version of a paper accepted for presentation at the 15th International Conference on Scientometrics & Informetrics (Gazni and Didegah 2015), with seventeen more subject fields.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Regional Information Center for Science and Technology, Shiraz, Iran

    Ali Gazni

  2. Research Unit for the Sociology of Education, University of Turku, Turku, Finland

    Fereshteh Didegah

Authors
  1. Ali Gazni
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  2. Fereshteh Didegah
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Fereshteh Didegah.

Appendix

Appendix

See Tables 5, 6.

Table 5 The number of authors whom the sampled authors have common references or citations with
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Table 6 The number of authors whom the sampled authors have common references or citations with
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Gazni, A., Didegah, F. The relationship between authors’ bibliographic coupling and citation exchange: analyzing disciplinary differences. Scientometrics 107, 609–626 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-016-1856-y

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