A New Semantic Similarity Based Measure For Assessing Research Publication’s Contribution / quote 2 of 12
Citations are insufficient evidence of impact, quality and research contribution
However, citations are one of many attributes surrounding a publication and by themselves provide an insufficient evidence of impact, quality and research contribution. This is due to a wide range of characteristics they exhibit, including the variations in sentiment (positive, negative), the semantics of the citation (comparison, factual information, definition, etc), the context of the citation (hypothesis, analysis, result, etc) and the motives for citing [Nicolaisen,2007], the popularity of topics and the size of research communities [Brumback,2009; Seglen,1997], the time delay for citations to show up [Priem and Hemminger,2010], the skew-ness of their distribution [Seglen,1992], the difference in the types of research papers (theoretical paper, experimental paper, case, survey) [Seglen,1997] and finally the ability to game/manipulate citations [Arnold and Fowler,2010; Edit- ors,2006].