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Citations in European Political Science Journals

Why Do Citations Matter?

We are interested in citations at two levels of analysis. At the aggregate level, citations reflect scientific communication. Accordingly, a dense citation network indicates a high level of scholarly exchange and a potential for new ideas to be disseminated rather quickly. Sparse networks, by contrast, suggest that scholars within a discipline rather ignore the works of colleagues. While at the aggregate level the direction of a citation relationship is not of key interest it is crucial at the individual level. Prima facie, citations reflect scientific standing and authority: if A cites B, this shows a certain amount of respect and deference.

Problems of Citation Analysis

Of course, things are more complicated in reality. Some very authoritative sources are not cited any longer but rather taken for granted, whereas in other cases A cites B because he disagrees with her. Finally, some citations are actually hidden self-citations: if A cites a previous paper by himself and his former PhD student C (who has left academia long since), the resulting link from A to C does obviously not reflect deference. Nonetheless, a citation relationship is directed in a relatively straightforward sense, and in-degree (the number of authors that cite A) is a reasonable proxy for scientific standing.

Journal Citation Networks: Politische Vierteljahresschrift, Political Studies, British Journal of Political Science

For the purpose of this analysis, the citation network of a journal consists of authors who publish at least one article in the journal that a) cites other work from the journal or b) is cited in the journal. The average number of references per article is rather large (39) and has grown over the years. This is most pronounced in the case of PS. The share of internal citations, however, is rather low: 1 per cent in PS, 2.3 per cent in PVS, and 3.6 per cent in BJPS. Given these figures, neither journal looks particularly self-contained. We do, however, note a distinct upturn in the share of internal citations in BJPS during the 1990s when the figure approaches 5 per cent.