Search results

In scholarly publications, citations play an essential epistemic role in creating and disseminating knowledge. Conversely, the use of problematic citations impedes the growth of knowledge, contaminates the knowledge base and disserves science. This study investigates the presence of problematic citations in the works of business ethics scholars.

The authors investigated two types of problematic citations: inaccurate citations and plagiarized citations. For this, 1,200 randomly selected citations from three leading business ethics journals were assessed based on: (1) referenced journal errors, (2) article title errors and (3) author name errors. Other papers that replicated the same title errors were identified.

Of the citations in the examined business ethics journals, 21.42% have at least one error. Of particular concern are the citation errors in article titles, where 3.75% of examined citations have minor errors and another 3.75% display major errors – 7.5% in total. Two-thirds of minor and major title errors were repeatedly replicated in previous and ensuing publications, which confirms the presence of citation plagiarism. An average article published in a business ethics journal contains at least three plagiarized citations. Even though business ethics fares well compared to other disciplines, a situation where every fifth citation is problematic is unacceptable.

Business ethics scholars are not immune to the use of problematic citations, and it is unlikely that attempting to improve researchers' awareness of the unethicality of this behavior will bring a desirable outcome.

Identifying that problematic citations exist in the business ethics literature is novel because it is expected that these researchers would not condone this practice.

This paper is the third part of a series of works investigating the top 100 knowledge management (KM) citation classic articles. The purpose of this paper is to understand why KM citation classics are well-cited.

The results of a survey of 58 KM citation classic authors were reported as descriptive statistics and subjected to content analysis.

An archetype of a KM citation classic author was constructed including demographics, personal characteristics, motivation and work preferences. There is a need for developing novel ideas in KM research. Timeliness of a publication is directly linked to its future impact. Editors should involve citation classics authors as reviewers, and KM researchers should improve their citation practices. Serendipity played a very important role in early KM research, especially from the perspective of discovering new and interesting phenomena.

Whereas the importance of serendipity is not questioned, future KM researchers should rely more on a formal, meticulous and well-planned research approach rather than on the hope of making a discovery by accident or luck. KM citation classics authors relied on serendipity to form the foundation of the discipline, but extending their work requires formal and structured inquiries.

Many authors conducted research to solve a problem to serve the needs of both practice and academia, rather than being overly theoretical.

Because KM researchers can no longer rely on past bibliometric theories, this paper helps understand why specific articles are highly cited and recommends how to conduct and develop future KM research that has impact.

The purpose of this paper is two‐fold: to explore the intellectual core of the knowledge management (KM) academic discipline in order to test whether it exhibits signs of a reference discipline; and to analyze the theoretical and practical impact of the discipline.

The most influential articles published in the Journal of Knowledge Management were selected and their cited and citing works were scientometrically analysed.

The KM discipline: builds its knowledge primarily upon research reports published in the English language; successfully disseminates its knowledge in both English and non‐English publications; does not exhibit a problematic self‐citation behavior; uses books and practitioner journals in the development of KM theory; converts experiential knowledge into academic knowledge; is not yet a reference discipline, but is progressing well towards becoming one; exerts a somewhat limited direct impact on practice; and is not a scientific fad.

KM researchers need to become aware of and use knowledge published in non‐English outlets. Given the status of KM as an applied discipline, it is critical that researchers continue utilizing non‐peer reviewed sources in their scholarly work. KM researchers should promote the dissemination of KM knowledge beyond the disciplinary boundaries. The issue whether KM should strive towards becoming a reference discipline should be debated further.

This study analyzes the KM field from the reference discipline perspective.

The purpose of this paper is to study the author self‐citation behavior in four disciplines: electronic engineering, general and internal medicine, organic chemistry and plant sciences.

By using SCI and random stratified method 1,000 articles were analysed as a sample in the four disciplines during 2004‐2006.

It was found that about 60 per cent of the articles in the four disciplines' literature contained at least one self‐citation. Four disciplines all showed skewed distributions of articles citation rates, either self‐citation or other citations. Organic chemistry articles had the highest self‐citations than the other disciplines. Share of self‐citation decreases with growing time window. The expected self‐citation rate increased with growing number of citation, co‐authorship and author productivity.

The outcomes of this study suggest that self‐citation indicators should be used as supplementary indicators in evaluative bibliometrics.

This study builds on previous discussion of an important area for both academics and academic journals – the issue of reviewers inappropriately asking for (or “coercing”) citation of their own work. That situation creates an opportunity for (hopefully a small number of) academics to engage in unethical behaviour, often with the goal of increasing their citation count. This study aims to draw attention to this often-overlooked issue, critically considering potential reviewer motivations and offering possible remedies.

This study reviews literature and critically discusses this issue, offering a typology for coercive citation suggestions and sharing previously unpublished commentary from Editors of leading journals.

This study provides a typology of reviewer motivations for coercing citations, suggests potential remedies and considers the positive and negative impacts of these suggestions.

This study identifies an area known from multiple discussions to be important to academics and Editors, where many want changes in journals’ practices. In response, this study provides recommendations for easy changes that would decrease the opportunity for unethical behaviour by reviewers and also, for some journals, improve the quality of reviews.

Potential ethnocentric biases in stated preference journal rankings are reviewed and revealed preference ranking methods are investigated. The aim of the paper is to identify an approach to ranking journals that minimises ethnocentric biases and better represents the international impact of research.

Coverage of marketing journals in Ulrich's, EBSCO, SSCI, JCR, Scopus and Google Scholar is explored. Citing references to 20 articles are analysed to determine citation time lags and explore the content of SSCI, Scopus and Google Scholar. To further review the extent of citation coverage, h‐index scores are generated for ten marketing journals using data from SSCI, Scopus and Google Scholar. In total, 36 marketing journals are ranked using the g‐index and Google Scholar data and results are compared to ten published rankings.

Stated preference ranking studies of marketing journals rely on US‐based respondents. The coverage of EBSCO, SSCI, JCR and Scopus databases is not representative of marketing's literature as they have few international sources, and a disproportionate coverage of US‐based journals. Google Scholar provides broader international coverage. The Impact Factor may be inappropriate for marketing journals as a large proportion of citations occur more than five years post‐publication. Results indicate that the g‐index is a superior approach to measuring the impact of marketing journals internationally.

Exposure of the limitations in existing ranking methods should encourage improvements in the development and use of journal rankings.

The investigations present original evidence to support long‐term concerns about approaches to journal ranking and citation analysis.

The purpose of this paper is to sensitize researchers to qualitative citation patterns that characterize original research, contribute toward the growth of knowledge and, ultimately, promote scientific progress.

This study describes how ideas are intertextually inserted into citing works to create new concepts and theories, thereby contributing to the growth of knowledge. By combining existing perspectives and dimensions of citations with Foucauldian theory, this study develops a typology of qualitative citation patterns for the growth of knowledge and uses examples from two classic works to illustrate how these citation patterns can be identified and applied.

A clearer understanding of the motivations behind citations becomes possible by focusing on the qualitative patterns of citations rather than on their quantitative features. The proposed typology includes the following patterns: original, conceptual, organic, juxtapositional, peripheral, persuasive, acknowledgment, perfunctory, inconsistent and plagiaristic.

In contrast to quantitative evaluations of the role and value of citations, this study focuses on the qualitative characteristics of citations, in the form of specific patterns of citations that engender original and novel research and those that may not. By integrating Foucauldian analysis of discourse with existing theories of citations, this study offers a more nuanced and refined typology of citations that can be used by researchers to gain a deeper semantic understanding of citations.

Replication is a primary self-correction device in science. In this paper, we have two aims: to examine how and when the results of replications are used in management and organization research and to use the results of this examination to offer guidelines for improving the self-correction process.

Study 1 analyzes co-citation patterns for 135 original-replication pairs to assess the direct impact of replications, specifically examining how often and when a replication study is co-cited with its original. In Study 2, a similar design is employed to measure the indirect impact of replications by assessing how often and when a meta-analysis that includes a replication of the original study is co-cited with the original study.

Study 1 reveals, among other things, that a huge majority (92%) of sources that cite the original study fail to co-cite a replication study, thus calling into question the impact of replications in our field. Study 2 shows that the indirect impact of replications through meta-analyses is likewise minimal. However, our analyses also show that replications published in the same journal that carried the original study and authored by teams including the authors of the original study are more likely to be co-cited, and that articles in higher-ranking journals are more likely to co-cite replications.

We use our results to formulate recommendations that would streamline the self-correction process in management research at the author-, reviewer- and journal-level. Our recommendations would create incentives to make replication attempts more common, while also increasing the likelihood that these attempts are targeted at the most relevant original studies.

This study aims to analyze the International Journal of Islamic and Middle Eastern Finance and Management (IMEFM) publication structure based on broad criteria including citations, authors, institutions, countries, papers and keywords using the Scopus database over a period of 12 years.

In this paper, the bibliometric technique is used to analyze the advancement of IMEFM. Bibliometrics is a research field of library and information science that studies bibliographic material with quantitative methods.

The results show a steady increase in the citation and publication structure of the IMEFM. That reflects its developing stature as a key academic outlet. The journal is advancing knowledge in Islamic finance and management research.

This study presents a macro view of the journey of IMEFM over the past 12 years. That presents the audience with an opportunity to understand the trend and focus of the journal.

Bibliometric analysis contributed to the theoretical development of the IMEFM journal in the following ways. First, it describes the evolution and intellectual structure by identifying and classifying the most common themes in the journal. More specifically, this analysis underscores two important milestones: IMEFM has emerged as a robust academic outlet, and its comprehensive focus on Islamic finance and other related areas. Furthermore, the bibliometric analysis of IMEFM’s citations and knowledge stock pattern summarizes the scientific community contributing to its evolution and development. Finally, this study’s results offer future research directions.

This paper aims to debate the challenges related to balancing relevance and ranking in management research.

This is a commentary on and review of challenges faced by twenty-first century management academics.

There is a chasm between managerial relevance and current managerial research; however, with academic buy-in, there are ways in which the chasm can be crossed.

The implications of this are wide reaching for management researchers. They are challenged to consider different methodologies, strategies and dissemination avenues for their research.

Researchers need to consider not only collaboration with practitioners, as they pursue solutions to managerial problems, but also more inter-disciplinary research that addresses the wicked problems of management in practice.

Solving the challenge of managerial relevance of business research has the potential to allow the contribution of business academia to be fully appreciated by practitioners.

The value of this thought-piece is that it challenges business and management academics to challenge the status quo and fight to make their research relevant to and valued by the business world.