Does a Long Reference List Guarantee More Citations? Analysis of Malaysian Highly Cited and Review Papers

Does a Long Reference List Guarantee More Citations? Analysis of Malaysian Highly Cited and Review Papers

Nader Ale Ebrahim

University of Malaya (UM) - Department of Engineering Design and Manufacture, Faculty of Engineering; University of Malaya (UM) - Research Support Unit, Centre of Research Services, Institute of Research Management and Monitoring (IPPP)

H. Ebrahimian

University Malaya - Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Faculty Science

Maryam Mousavi

University of Malaya - Centre for Product Design and Manufacturing, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering

Farzad Tahriri

University of Malaya (UM) - Faculty of Engineering

January 28, 2015

The International Journal of Management Science and Business, Vol. 1, No. 3, pp. 6-15, 2015

Abstract:     

Earlier publications have shown that the number of references as well as the number of received citations are field-dependent. Consequently, a long reference list may lead to more citations. The purpose of this article is to study the concrete relationship between number of references and citation counts. This article tries to find an answer for the concrete case of Malaysian highly cited papers and Malaysian review papers. Malaysian paper is a paper with at least one Malaysian affiliation. A total of 2466 papers consisting of two sets, namely 1966 review papers and 500 highly-cited articles, are studied. The statistical analysis shows that an increase in the number of references leads to a slight increase in the number of citations. Yet, this increase is not statistically significant. Therefore, a researcher should not try to increase the number of received citations by artificially increasing the number of references.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 11

Keywords: H-index, Citation analysis, Bibliometrics, Impact factor, Performance evaluation, Relations between citations and references

JEL Classification: L11, L1, L2, M11, M12, M1, M54, Q1, O1, O3, P42, P24, P29, Q31, Q32, L17

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Date posted: March 4, 2015  

Suggested Citation

Ale Ebrahim, Nader and Ebrahimian, H. and Mousavi , Maryam and Tahriri, Farzad, Does a Long Reference List Guarantee More Citations? Analysis of Malaysian Highly Cited and Review Papers (January 28, 2015). The International Journal of Management Science and Business, Vol. 1, No. 3, pp. 6-15, 2015. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2572789

H-index, Citation analysis, Bibliometrics, Impact factor, Performance evaluation, Relations between citations and references