Published in:
Psihologija
1996, vol. 29, no. 4, pp. 417-428
Estimation of "face validity" of psychological research papers based on in-text citations
Faculty of Philosophy in Novi Sad,
Department of Psychology
Abstract: The possibility of evaluation of the quality of psychological papers on the basis of in-text citation was examined. In addition to traditional indices of this kind the measures of degree of overlapping, based on co-citations in various parts of the articles, were also used. The rationale for their use was found in author's obligation to cite the same sources in different parts of the article, so as to demonstrate consistency of the study.
By using the series of one-way ANOVA-s and the discriminant analysis it was tested to what degree citation measures differentiate among three groups of articles of various quality. One of the groups involved papers published in distinguished international journals, while the other two articles from Yugoslav journals, classified according to the academic status of their authors.
The results showed that citation-based measures successfully differentiate among three groups, especially the group of papers of international quality. Accordingly, the results open the possibility of using these indicators as measures of face validity in preliminary automatic positive selection of papers submitted to publication.
Key words: citation analysis, in-text citations, psychological journals, research paper quality, discriminant analysis, Yugoslavia
