Madrid, Spain. There are no firm rules that say science must be an altruistic endeavor. In fact, most of the time it is egotistic, according to a new study which analyzes how scientists often gravitate toward cited the very journals where they publish their most recent results.

Citations in science are important as a mechanism to follow the evolution of science and because they are employed as an indicator as to the importance of scientists and institutions: the higher the number of citations of an article, the greater is its recognition. This measure of success implies increased sources of funding, recognition, salaries, etc.

Why some scientists choose a given citation and not others to include in the references of their scientific writings is an issue which is not completely resolved. The impetus for carrying out the current research arose precisely because of the difficulty encountered when trying to evaluate the researchers’ real effort and the results they obtained, in terms of verifiable results, remuneration, promotion, and funding.

According to Miñano and Nickel, the problem arises when the authors, instead of altruistically choosing original sources which support their reasoning, select citations in an attempt to increase the possibility of successfully publishing in the scientific journals. “In this way, prejudices arise, and what is worse, so does the discrimination suffered by scientists who are not cited,” explains Manuel Núñez Nickel, the UC3M Full Professor of Financial Economics and Accounting.

Such discrimination can be summarized in three fundamental aspects:

• personal characteristics of the author (e.g., sex, race, where the doctorate was obtained, current or previous affiliation, if the author forms part of the editorial staff of some journal, etc.);
  
  
• characteristics of the article (methodology utilized, number of pages, if it is a bibliographic recompilation, etc.); and
  
  
• finally, type or nature of the journal (journals with a higher degree of impact tend to be cited).

With the systems of control that exist at present (double-blind review) it is difficult to control this type of behaviour, according to the study authors. Moreover, the reviewers and editors could be accentuating this behavior which they criticize by advising them to cite journals with a certain degree of impact or certain authors.

For example, one journal advises citing the journal where the article will be published. The explanation of the editors is:

If our journal is not interesting to cite, why do they want to publish in it?

If this editor did not wish to alter the essence of the citation, the researchers believe the reasoning should have been: If you give us a quality research study, we are interested in whatever you do, and if we consider that it is not of good quality, we reject it.

A possible solution

The researchers point out a partial solution to this problem: the editor of the journal should give clear guidelines for the reviewers to follow, so that the moment that they are aware that this type of discrimination exists, they eradicate it at the grass roots level.

“At a personal level, this is extremely difficult, since an editor is usually specialized in only one of the areas of the scientific field, not in all of them. But nowadays, with the level of knowledge available, if the editors sent the correct message, penalizing those reviewers who “advise certain citations or self-impose certain journal discipline, there would be a marked improvement in the correct direction”.

This study’s main contribution is to organize such ideas from a broad range of literature and suggest a different procedure for selecting citations. In this sense, “an author cannot permit herself to not know the most relevant sources if she wishes to have a certain trustworthiness within her area”, Nuñez Nickel explained.

However, when deciding which authors to cite, if various articles cover the same needs, the author may be inclined toward those which are similar to other reviewers of certain journals, full professors from institutions which interest the author, and so forth. This could be one of the reasons why elite schools appear rather than those offering original ideas.

The researchers were able to determine, according to the results, that there always is “amoral” behavior which cannot be controlled when citing authors. “Science is not altruistic, but in the majority of cases, it is egotistical,” states Professor Núñez Níckel. “If these hypotheses are true, Science could degenerate or simply stagnate without actually advancing in certain areas.” he added.

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How Scientists Decide on Citations Used in Papers
Friday, 18 December 2009

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