On the Possibilities of Evaluating Properties of Scientific Documents on the Basis of their Citations Count (or again: What Property is Reflected by Citations Count par excellence, after all?). Part 2: Quality?

Abstract

The objective is consideration of the recent works on the problem of the phenomenon reflected by citations count of scientific documents with a slant to the papers analyzing the citations count possibilities to reflect quality of cited research. The method: authoritative definitions of quality were under analysis and interpretation of corresponding research publications in the context of the results the mentioned analysis was undertaken. The results: citations count does not reflect quality of cited research as there are not causal relations between quality and citedness. The conclusions: since in practice the results of the citations count for documents value assessment and of peer assessment of their quality may mostly coincide, this makes it possible still to use citations count as a proxy indicator of quality. As for the “negative” citations, they seem to refer to cited items of high value, but of low quality.