The decrease in uncited articles and its effect on the concentration of citations
The decrease in uncited articles and its effect on the concentration of citations is a research paper published in Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology (2023). On theSindex it has a DataRank of 0.360. It has been cited 10 times.
Abstract
AbstractEmpirical evidence demonstrates that citations received by scholarly publications follow a pattern of preferential attachment, resulting in a power‐law distribution. Such asymmetry has sparked significant debate regarding the use of citations for research evaluation. However, a consensus has yet to be established concerning the historical trends in citation concentration. Are citations becoming more concentrated in a small number of articles? Or have recent geopolitical and technical changes in science led to more decentralized distributions? This ongoing debate stems from a lack of technical clarity in measuring inequality. Given the variations in citation practices across disciplines and over time, it is crucial to account for multiple factors that can influence the findings. This article explores how reference‐based and citation‐based approaches, uncited articles, citation inflation, the expansion of bibliometric databases, disciplinary differences, and self‐citations affect the evolution of citation concentration. Our results indicate a decreasing trend in citation concentration, primarily driven by a decline in uncited articles, which, in turn, can be attributed to the growing significance of Asia and Europe. On the whole, our findings clarify current debates on citation concentration and show that, contrary to a widely‐held belief, citations are increasingly scattered.
›Data sources & pipeline
FAIR Checklist
Context only (not used in score)- Has DOI
FAIR checklist signals are shown for context only and do not affect DataRank scoring.
DataRank Breakdown
Base Score Contribution
0.360
From this paper's citation signal
Citation Network Contribution
0
Citation network not refreshed for this result
This paper's DataRank is currently driven only by its base citation score. Citation network data was not refreshed for this result.
Learn more about DataRank methodology →Why this DataRank?
DataRank blends this paper's own citation count with the influence of the papers that cite it. Here, roughly 100% comes from its base citations and 0% from the citation network.
- Base score B(p)
- log1p(citation_count) — grows sub-linearly, so a paper with 1,000 citations is not 10× a paper with 100.
- Network N(p)
- Σ over citers of log1p(Cq) ÷ max(outdegreeq, 1). Being cited by a highly-cited paper with few references counts most.
- Damping factor d = 0.85
- DataRank = (1−d)·B(p) + d·N(p) — the two cards above are each already multiplied by their share.
- Self-citations excluded
- Citers sharing any OpenAlex author ID with this paper are filtered out before the network sum.
Citers are pulled from OpenAlex sorted by cited_by_count:descand capped per paper, so when the cap binds we keep the highest-signal references and the score is reproducible across reruns.