ARS | Publication request: Comparative Citation Analysis of Duplicate Or Highly Related Publications

Submitted to: Journal of the American Society for Information Science
Publication Type: Review Article
Publication Acceptance Date: November 18, 2005
Publication Date: September 12, 2006
Citation: Knothe, G.H. 2006. Comparative citation analysis of duplicate or highly related publications. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology. 57(13):1830-1839.

Technical Abstract: Four cases, illustrated by four examples, of duplicating or highly-related publications can be distinguished and are analyzed here using citation data obtained from the Science Citation Index: 1) publication by different authors in the same journal; 2) the same author(s) publishing in different journals; 3) publication by different authors in different journals; 4) the same author(s) publishing highly related papers simultaneously in the same journal, often as part of a series of papers. Example 1, illustrating case 1, is an occurrence of highly-related publications in mechanistic organic chemistry. Example 2, from analytical organic chemistry, contains elements of cases 2 and 3. Example 3, dealing solely with case 3, discusses two time-delayed publications from analytical biochemistry, which were highlighted by Garfield several times in the past as to how the SCI could be utilized to avoid duplicate publication. Example 4, derived from synthetic organic chemistry (total syntheses of taxol), contains elements of cases 1, 3 and 4 and, to a lesser extent, of case 2. The citation records of the highly related or duplicating publications can deviate considerably from the journal impact factors as was observed in three of the four examples relating to cases 2, 3 and 4. The examples suggest that citation of a paper may depend significantly on the journal in which it is published. As indicator of this dependence, the journals in which the papers used in the present examples were examined. Other factors such as the occurrence of key words in the title of a paper may also play a role.