Letter to the EditorChinese-language articles are biased in citations
Introduction
In a paper published recently, Li, Qiao, Li, and Jin (2014) analyzed citations received by Chinese- and English-language articles published in Chinese-English bilingual journals indexed by Scopus and Web of Science (WoS). They concluded that Chinese-language articles were not biased in citations compared with English-language articles published in the same journal, as no significant difference was found in terms of the mean citations received between the set of Chinese-language articles and the set of English-language articles published in these journals. We disagree with their interpretation of the results: in order to investigate language bias in citations, one must take into account the well-known fact that scholars prefer to cite articles in their native language (Bookstein & Yitzhaki, 1999). This is also the case for Chinese researchers: Tang, Shapira, and Youtie (2015) revealed that a high rate of internal citations exists among Chinese researchers.
Therefore, to answer the question of whether Chinese-language articles are biased in citations compared with English-language articles, Chinese scholars’ contributions to the citations received should be excluded from consideration or be analyzed separately from those of researchers from other countries.
Section snippets
Methods
Using the same data source and methodology as Li et al. (2014), we selected Chinese-English bilingual journals from Scopus and WoS according to the following three steps:
- (1)
Retrieval of Chinese-language articles published in 2010–2011 and find corresponding journals.
- (2)
Removal of journals which published articles only in Chinese, or in languages other than Chinese and English, from the list of retrieved journals.
- (3)
Removal of journals from source countries other than “Peoples R China” (e.g. Hong Kong,
Results
In a manner similar to Li et al. (2014), we found that China (defined as People's Republic of China excluding Hong Kong and Macau) contributed to most articles published in, and to citations received by, Chinese-English bilingual journals. As Table 1 indicates, China contributed to 96.6% articles (97.6% of total Chinese-language articles and 88.2% of total English-language articles) published in these journals in Scopus and 95.7% articles (97.0% of total Chinese-language articles and 85.0% of
Discussions and conclusion
We found that there is not much difference between Chinese-language articles and English-language articles in receiving citations from Chinese scholars, but that a big difference exists in receiving citations from non-Chinese scholars. As a result, we cannot conclude, as does Li et al. (2014), that Chinese-language articles are not biased in citations compared with English-language ones. Chinese language articles are undoubtedly biased in terms of citations, as are most articles published in
References (4)
- et al.
Chinese-language articles are not biased in citations: Evidences from Chinese-English bilingual journals in Scopus and Web of Science
Journal of Informetrics
(2014) - et al.
Own-language preference: A new measure of relative language self-citation
Scientometrics
(1999)
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