The Problem of Junior-Authored Papers in Constructing Citation Counts

Abstract

Citation counts are central to many studies in the sociology of science. Due to cost considerations and the format of the Science Citation Index, researchers often collect citations only to a scientist's first-authored publications (so called 'straight counts'), rather than to complete counts based on all published papers. This paper examines the consequences of using straight counts to study the careers of a sample of PhD biochemists. It is found that even though these two measures are highly correlated, there is a significant chance of making substantive errors when straight counts are substituted for complete counts. The problem is found to be more severe when citations are the dependent variable rather than an independent variable. It is argued that our findings can be generalized to other fields where multiple authorship is common. Accordingly, extreme care must be used in interpreting results based on straight citation counts.