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

Ali Gazni () and Fereshteh Didegah ()
Additional contact information
Ali Gazni: Regional Information Center for Science and Technology
Fereshteh Didegah: University of Turku

Scientometrics, 2016, vol. 107, issue 2, No 16, 609-626

Abstract: 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.

Keywords: Author bibliographic coupling; Citation impact; Imetrics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11192-016-1856-y Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:scient:v:107:y:2016:i:2:d:10.1007_s11192-016-1856-y

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/11192

DOI: 10.1007/s11192-016-1856-y

Access Statistics for this article

Scientometrics is currently edited by Wolfgang Glänzel

More articles in Scientometrics from Springer, Akadémiai Kiadó
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().