Quantitative and Qualitative Analysis of Editor Behavior through Potentially Coercive Citations

Claudiu Herteliu, Marcel Ausloos, Bogdan Ileanu (), Giulia Rotundo and Tudorel Andrei
Additional contact information
Claudiu Herteliu: Department of Statistics and Econometrics, Bucharest University of Economic Studies, 010552 Bucharest, Romania
Giulia Rotundo: Department of Methods and Models for Economics, Territory, and Finance, Sapienza University of Rome, 00162 Rome, Italy
Tudorel Andrei: Department of Statistics and Econometrics, Bucharest University of Economic Studies, 010552 Bucharest, Romania

Publications, 2017, vol. 5, issue 2, 1-16

Abstract: How much is the h -index of an editor of a well-ranked journal improved due to citations which occur after his/her appointment? Scientific recognition within academia is widely measured nowadays by the number of citations or h -index. Our dataset is based on a sample of four editors from a well-ranked journal (impact factor, IF, greater than 2). The target group consists of two editors who seem to benefit by their position through an increased citation number (and subsequently h -index) within the journal. The total amount of citations for the target group is greater than 600. The control group is formed by another set of two editors from the same journal whose relations between their positions and their citation records remain neutral. The total amount of citations for the control group is more than 1200. The timespan for which the citations’ pattern has been studied is 1975–2015. Previous coercive citations for a journal’s benefit (an increase of its IF) has been indicated. To the best of our knowledge, this is a pioneering work on coercive citations for personal (editors’) benefit. Editorial teams should be aware about this type of potentially unethical behavior and act accordingly.

Keywords: academic journal editor; citations; inappropriate tactics; coercive citations; citations overdose (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A2 D83 L82 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2304-6775/5/2/15/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2304-6775/5/2/15/ (text/html)

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:gam:jpubli:v:5:y:2017:i:2:p:15-:d:100179

Access Statistics for this article

Publications is currently edited by Ms. Jennifer Zhang

More articles in Publications from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().