A comparative view of the new journal: Assessment

The reference sections from all articles in the 1997 volumes of Assessment, Journal of Personality Assessment, and Psychological Assessment were entered into a database and analyzed. An article published in Assessment averaged almost 31 references. An article published in Journal of Personality Assessment contained an average of 33 references. Psychological Assessment averaged 38 references per article. The median age of the references in the three journals was 8 years with an interquartile range of 4 to 14 years. The Journal of Personality Assessment had the largest number of citations in this database of 5,316 references. Each of these received a relatively large number of their citations from articles published in the same journal (self-citations). Randomly selected articles from the 1997 volume of Assessment received fewer citations in the Social Science Citation Index than a similar set of articles from the other two journals. However, the data on Assessment, when compared with data available on other new scientific publications, suggests that Assessment is doing as well as other fledgling journals.     

On citing the literature

Some outlandish examples are used to support the argument that literature citations should be treated as references to documents and not references to individuals. Different consequences for scientific behavior are implicit in the alternative usages.     

Historical misrepresentation in science: The case of fetal alcohol syndrome

The history of the fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS) provides a microcosm in which to explore the larger ramifications of historical citations in biomedical publications. Though some historical references such as Biblical writings may hint at a rudimentary understanding of the relationship between maternal drinking and fetal development, no definitive case can be made for an understanding of FAS dating back hundreds of years. Authors who claim an impressive history for FAS misrepresent that history. The modern history of FAS raises a question concerning citations of original discoveries. The first paper describing ethanol-induced damage to the fetus appeared in 1968 yet most researchers cite one of two papers from 1973. Both ancient citations and modern references to original discoveries pose difficult questions for the scientist. Both dilemmas may be solved by a better reading of the literature and a more judicious wording when writing about history. This work was supported in part by Grant # AA10681 to SNP.     

Evaluating the function of applied behavior analysis a bibliometric analysis

Analysis of scholarly citations involving behavioral journals reveals that, consistent with its mission, applied behavior analysis research frequently references the basic behavioral literature but, as some have suspected, exerts narrow scholarly influence.     

The echoes of Wundt's work in the United States, 1887–1977: A quantitative citation analysis

Summary The frequency of references to Wundt's book-length publications in experimental papers appearing in the American Journal of Psychology was determined. The most widely cited work, by far, is the Grundzüge der physiologischen Psychologie. The distinct decline of Wundt's impact on American psychology is clearly reflected in the frequencies of the citations.     

One hundred years of laws in psychology

Mainstream psychology in the 20th century has been conceived as a nomothetic science, but few psychological "laws" have been proposed. A PsycLit search of journal abstracts from 1900 to 1999 yielded a total of 3,093 "law" citations, or 22 per 10,000 entries, with two psychophysical laws (Weber's law and Stevens's power law) and two learning laws (Herrnstein's matching law and Thorndike's law of effect) as the most frequently cited. The number of law citations has been decreasing throughout the century, to 10 per 10,000 entries in the last decade, with few references to laws of recent origin. This could be the result of increasing doubts about the lawfulness of psychological processes coupled with a general preference for less ambitious terms (such as effects, principles, models, or functions).     

The explosion of knowledge,references, and citations. Psychology's unique response to a crisis

The knowledge explosion has created enormous difficulties for researchers to be aware of, access, and process the volume of new literature. Electronic literature retrieval systems and specialization on narrow topics have been strategies used to cope with these problems. In this study, the authors examined the additional effects of the knowledge explosion on researchers' writing, referencing, and citing. Counts of references within sampled empirical journal articles in sociology, physics, biology, and experimental and social psychology revealed impacts of the knowledge explosion in all disciplines but the greatest effects within psychology. Detailed analyses indicated that substantial changes in the numbers of references and citations and in their format and use within the research article are psychology's unique response to the knowledge explosion.     

The impact of chess research on cognitive science

Summary Although chess research has not been a mainstream activity in cognitive science, it has had a significant impact on this field because of the experimental and theoretical tools it has provided. The two most-cited references in chess research, de Groot (1965) and Chase and Simon (1973 a), have accumulated over 250 citations each (SSCI andSCI sources summed), with the majority of citations coming a decade or more from their publication dates. Both works are frequently cited in contemporary cognitive-psychology textbooks. Chess playing provides a model task environment for the study of basic cognitive processes, such as perception, memory, and problem solving. It also offers a unique opportunity for the study of individual differences (chess expertise) because of Elo's (1965, 1978) development of a chess-skill rating scale. Chess has also enjoyed a privileged position in Artificial-Intelligence research as a model domain for exploring search and evaluation processes.     

The nature of social and personality psychology as reflected in JPSP, 1965-2000

A bibliometric analysis of the first 36 years (1965-2000) of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (JPSP) is presented. The authors analyzed the structure of JPSP on the basis of contents and other aspects related to productivity, such as growth in the number of articles and authors, and "invisible colleges." In 2001, JPSP articles were cited over 23,000 times. An increasing number of older, classic articles are cited, suggesting that there are an accumulating number of citations whose influence endures over time. JPSP articles have grown in length, number of studies included, number of references, and number of authors and have become more international with an increasing proportion of authors from outside the United States. The pattern of findings suggests an increasingly complex and mature science.     

The journal of school psychology's first twenty years: Contributions and contributors

This article reports a retrospective view of the first 20 years of the Journal of School Psychology (JSP). The principal purpose of the review is to determine the number of contributors to JSP and their characteristics, the number and types of citations, and the most frequently referred authors, books, tests, and journals. Nine hundred and ten persons authored or coauthored one or more articles for JSP during its first 20 years. Among these 910, 764 contributed one article, and 8 contributed seven or more articles. The characteristics of these 8 persons are examined in detail in the present study. Six thousand seven hundred twenty-two separate references are cited within the 709 articles. The most frequently cited reference is Wechler's WISC and WISC-R (51). Other frequently cited tests include the PPVT (18), Bender-Gestalt (18), and WRAT (17). Caplan's The Theory and Practice of Mental Health Consultation (24) is the most frequently referenced book. JSP is the most frequently referenced journal. An examination of the total number of separate references appearing in the 709 articles reveals 65 separate references to Cowen, 43 to Dunn, 41 to Koppitz, and 40 to Caplan.     

Citation rates for experimental psychology articles published between 1950 and 2004: Top-cited articles in behavioral cognitive psychology

From citation rates for over 85,000 articles published between 1950 and 2004 in 56 psychology journals, we identified a total of 500 behavioral cognitive psychology articles that ranked in the top 0.6?% in each half-decade, in terms of their mean citations per year using the Web of Science. Thirty nine of these articles were produced by 78 authors who authored three or more of them, and more than half were published by only five journals. The mean number of cites per year and the total number of citations necessary for an article to achieve various percentile rankings are reported for each journal. The mean number of citations necessary for an article published within each half-decade to rank at any given percentile has steadily increased from 1950 to 2004. Of the articles that we surveyed, 11?% had zero total citations, and 35?% received fewer than four total citations. Citations for post-1994 articles ranking in the 50th-75th and 90th-95th percentiles have generally continued to grow across each of their 3-year postpublication bins. For pre-1995 articles ranking in the 50th-75th and 90th-95th percentiles, citations peaked in the 4- to 6- or 7- to 9-year postpublication bins and decreased linearly thereafter, until asymptoting. In contrast, for the top-500 articles, (a) for pre-1980 articles, citations grew and peaked 10-18-year postpublication bins, and after a slight decrease began to linearly increase again; (b) for post-1979 articles, citations have continually increased across years in a nearly linear fashion. We also report changes in topics covered by the top-cited articles over the decades.     

Trends in Article Citations in Three Counseling Journals, 1952–1988

Reference lists from three major counseling journals spanning the years 1952 through 1988 were analyzed for reference citations. Citations gradually became more numerous and came from increasingly diverse sources. About one-half of all citations referred to journal articles. Analysis of the differences among the three journals' citations suggests that each journal fills a special niche while contributing to the communality of the field.     

PSYCHOLOGY AND HEALTH: CONTRIBUTIONS OF PSYCHOLOGY TO THE IMPROVEMENT OF HEALTH AND HEALTH CARE

Psychology as both a science and a profession has been closely identified with other disciplines in the broad field of health since the turn of the century. Recent advances in health care have reinforced the growing belief that the promotion of health and the prevention and treatment of illness can be greatly enhanced by incorporating the scientific findings and modern technology of psychology into everyday practices. Outlining the contributions of psychology to health care throughout the world is the primary purpose of this report. In this brief survey, only some of the most timely and relevant issues can be mentioned, together with examples of current work in the field. The reader interested in pursuing these psychological contributions more thoroughly is encouraged to review pertinent references from the citations at the end of this report. After an introductory overview, special attention is given to each of the major areas within the broad field of health care where psychological applications have been particularly useful.     

Leone Ebreo in Tullia d’Aragona’s Dialogo. Between Varchi’s legacy and philosophical autonomy

ABSTRACT

This paper explores the impact of the philosophical structure of Leone Ebreo’s Dialoghi d’amore on the construction of Tullia d’Aragona’s Dialogo della infinità di amore. Analysing both the explicit references to and the indirect citations of Leone’s Dialoghi, I aim to demonstrate how the reinterpretation of some fundamental topics of this work – such as the re-evaluation of the sensual aspect of human love and the distinction between honest and vulgar love – lies at the heart of Tullia’s dialogue. The article also intends to shed light on the complex role of Benedetto Varchi in the elaboration of these issues by d’Aragona, who for the final revision of her text could have relied – as she did for her poems – on his collaboration.     

Principles and theory in bioethics.

The following citations were selected from BIOETHICSLINE, the online database prepared at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics for the National Library of Medicine's MEDLARS system. Searching the keywords autonomy, beneficence, casuistry, justice, and virtues, as well as the text word principlism produced more than 400 citations. Only the citations concerned with theory and principle in the practice of bioethics are included here -- e.g., works about justice in resource allocation have been deleted.     

Traffic Citations in Relation to Gender

The present study was designed to examine the possibility that traffic officers are more lenient in issuing citations to other gender drivers. Statistics on the traffic citations issued for a year were obtained from the highway patrols of two states. The information was classified by violation, officers' gender, and drivers' gender. For most categories of violation, men issued a greater percent of their citations to male drivers than women did and women issued a greater percent of their citations to female drivers than men did. The differences could have been due to leniency on the part of one gender or both genders of officers. Leniency on the part of both genders is more consistent with the literature on helping in situations with low cost and low threat to the helper. A possible interpretation is that gender identity includes norms for positive treatment of other gender persons.     

The Evaluative Use of Citation Analysis for Communication Journals

This study investigated the impact of the omission of scholarly communication journals from Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) and Arts and Humanities Citation Index (AHCI) on citation-based appraisals of communication literature. Citation data were collected from reference lists in articles appearing in 27 communication journals published during 1990, including 14 not indexed by SSCI or AHCI. The 14 journals not included in SSCI or AHCI contributed 1,953, or 26%, of the 7,640 citations to authors during 1990, and 1,156, or 25%, of the 4,587 citations to journals in 1990. Twenty-seven of the 50 most frequently cited authors received 25% or more of their citations from journals omitted by SSCI and AHCI. This study found that an accurate evaluation of a scholar's articles based on citations received will not be possible until SSCI and/or AHCI choose to include the omitted journals, and that computer applications could be used to provide a convenient and inexpensive on-line citation index for communication literature. The Journal Impact Rating, a measure for use in comparing journals’impact on the basis of citations received, was introduced.     

Citation Classics in Suicide and Life Threatening Behavior: A Research Note

The number of citations a scholarly work receives is a common measure of its impact on the scientific literature; “citation classics” are the most highly cited works. The content of Suicide and Life‐Threatening Behavior (SLTB) citation classics is described here. The impact of SLTB citation classics is compared to their counterparts in journals having published the most suicide papers. All data are from the ISI electronic venue on the Web of Science and refer to the number of citations the top 1% of works received in each of ten journals from 1975 through August 10, 2011. Among all ten journals, SLTB ranked first in the number of works on suicide. The principle theme of half of SLTB suicide classics was literature review. The median number of citations for SLTB citation classics (top 1%) was 121.5, with a range between 96 and 279 citations, but classics from generalized psychiatric journals received more citations as anticipated. Journal impact factors explained 73% of the variance in classic’s citation counts across journals. On average, suicide classics received 30% more citations than all classics. Among a second group of five specialized suicide journals, however, SLTB ranked first in average 5‐year impact. Although SLTB produced the highest number of suicide articles of any journal, SLTB’s citation classics received fewer citations than suicide classics in high‐impact/prestige, general journals. Future work is needed to assess what predicts which SLTB articles ultimately become citation classics.