To read this content please select one of the options below:

The effect of interdisciplinary components' citation intensity on scientific impact

Shiji Chen (Chinese Academy of Science and Education Evaluation (CASEE), Hangzhou Dianzi University, Hangzhou, China)
Yanhui Song (School of Management, Hangzhou Dianzi University, Hangzhou, China)
Junping Qiu (Chinese Academy of Science and Education Evaluation (CASEE), Hangzhou Dianzi University, Hangzhou, China)
Vincent Larivière (École de Bibliothéconomie et des Sciences de l’information, Université de Montréal, Montréal, Canada) (Observatoire des Sciences et des Technologies (OST), Centre Interuniversitaire de Recherche sur la Science et la Technologie (CIRST), Université du Québec à Montréal, Montréal, Canada)

Library Hi Tech

ISSN: 0737-8831

Article publication date: 3 August 2021

Issue publication date: 30 November 2021

357

Abstract

Purpose

This study explores whether interdisciplinary components' citation intensity (ICCI) affects papers' scientific impact. In this study, the term “interdisciplinary components” refers to the disciplines that are different from the discipline to which the target research belongs. The citation intensity is the degree of density or sparseness of the paper citation network for a discipline. Previous studies have shown that the scientific impact of interdisciplinary research is influenced by interdisciplinarity and its properties, namely, variety, balance and disparity. However, the effect of ICCI on scientific impact has not been comprehensively explored.

Design/methodology/approach

This study is based on the entire publication database of the Web of Science for the year 2000, where the authors provide an indicator to measure the ICCI of each publication. A tobit regression model is used to examine the effect of ICCI on scientific impact, controlling for a range of variables associated with the characteristics of the publications studied.

Findings

The results show that ICCI has a positive effect on scientific impact. The authors’ results further point out that ICCI displays a curvilinear inverted U-shape relationship with scientific impact. It means that including more citation-intensive interdisciplinary components can increase the scientific impact of interdisciplinary research. However, excessive use of citation-intensive interdisciplinary components may reduce the scientific impact of interdisciplinary research.

Originality/value

This study shows that, in addition to interdisciplinarity, the scientific impact of interdisciplinary research is also affected by the citation characteristics of interdisciplinary components, namely ICCI.

Keywords

Acknowledgements

The first author acknowledges support from the National Social Science Foundation of China (Grant 20BTQ083).

Citation

Chen, S., Song, Y., Qiu, J. and Larivière, V. (2021), "The effect of interdisciplinary components' citation intensity on scientific impact", Library Hi Tech, Vol. 39 No. 4, pp. 1084-1096. https://doi.org/10.1108/LHT-01-2021-0038

Publisher

:

Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2021, Emerald Publishing Limited

Related articles