A Probe into Causes of Non-citation Based on Survey Data

Empirical analysis results about the possible causes leading to non-citation may help increase the potential of researchers’ work to be cited and editorial staffs of journals to identify contributions with potential high quality. After complete literature retrieval from the Web of Science, Google Scholar, and Scopus databases, we find that very few studies focus on the empirical analysis of causes of non-citation. In this study, we conduct a survey on the possible causes leading to citation or non-citation based on a questionnaire. We then perform a statistical analysis to identify the major causes leading to non-citation in combination with the analysis on the data collected through the survey. Most respondents to our questionnaire identified eight major causes ( ‘research hotspots and novel topics of content’, ‘longer intervals after publication’, ‘research topics similar to my work’, ‘high quality of content’, ‘reasonable self-citation’, ‘highlighted title’, ‘prestigious authors’, and ’academic tastes and interests similar to mine’ ) that facilitate easy citation of one’s papers. They also pointed out that the vast difference between their current and former research directions as the primary reason for their previously uncited papers. They feel that text that includes notes, comments, and letters to editors are rarely cited, and the same is true for too short or too lengthy papers. In comparison, it is easier for reviews, articles, or papers of intermediate length to be cited.