Influence of proceedings papers on citation impact in seven sub-fields of sustainable energy research 2005–2011

Peter Ingwersen, Birger Larsen, J. Carlos Garcia-Zorita, Antonio Eleazar Serrano-López, Elias Sanz-Casado
2014 Scientometrics  
This paper analyses the following seven sub-fields of Sustainable Energy Research with respect to the influence of proceedings papers on citation patterns across citing and cited document types, overall sub-field and document type impacts and citedness: the Wind Power, Renewable Energy, Solar and Wave Energy, Geothermal, Bio-fuel and Bio-mass energy sub-fields. The analyses cover peer reviewed research and review articles as well as two kinds of proceeding papers from conferences published
more » ... 09 in (a) book series or volumes and (b) special journal issues excluding meeting abstracts cited 2005-11 through Web of Science. Central findings are: The distribution across document types of cited vs. citing documents is highly asymmetric. Predominantly proceedings papers from both proceeding volumes as well as published in journals cite research articles (60-76 %). Largely, journal-based proceedings papers are cited rather than papers published in book series or volumes and have field impacts corresponding to research articles. With decreasing proceedings paper dominance in research fields the ratio of proceeding paper volumes over journal-based proceedings papers decreases significantly and the percentage of proceedings papers in journals citing journalbased proceedings papers over all publications citing journal-based proceedings papers decreases significantly (from 26.3 % in Wind Power to 4 % in Bio Fuel). Further, the segment of all kinds of proceedings papers (the combined proceedings paper types) citing all proceedings papers over all publications citing all kinds of proceedings papers decreases significantly (from 36.1 % in Wind Power to 11.3 % in Bio Fuel). Simultaneously and significantly the field citedness increases across the seven research fields. The distribution of citations from review articles shows that novel knowledge essentially derives directly from research articles (53-72 %)to a much less extent from proceedings publications published in journals (13-9 %). The publication profiles of research articles and proceedings papers in proceedings paper dominant subfields demonstrate substantial variety with respect to WoS categories (Wave and Solar Energy) and author countries (Wind Power and Wave Energy).
doi:10.1007/s11192-014-1335-2 fatcat:xo34gd77p5hdjikbqxosam7n4i