Paper Info
Title
The effect of the "very important paper" VIP designation in Angewandte Chemie International Edition on citation impact: A propensity score matching analysis
Abstract
AbstractScientific journals publish an increasing number of articles every year. To steer readers' attention to the most important papers, journals use several techniques e.g., lead paper. Angewandte Chemie International Edition AC, a leading international journal in chemistry, signals high-quality papers through designating them as a "very important paper" VIP. This study aims to investigate the citation impact of Communications in AC receiving the special feature VIP, both cumulated and over time. Using propensity score matching, treatment group VIP and control group non-VIP were balanced for 14 covariates to estimate the unconfounded "average treatment effect on the treated" for the VIP designation. Out of N = 3,011 Communications published in 2007 and 2008, N = 207 received the special feature VIP. For each Communication, data were collected from AC e.g., referees' ratings and from the databases Chemical Abstracts e.g., sections and the Web of Science e.g., citations. The estimated unconfounded average treatment effect on the treated that is, Communications designated as a VIP was statistically significant and amounted to 19.83 citations. In addition, the special feature VIP fostered the cumulated annual citation growth. For instance, the time until a Communication reached its maximum annual number of citations, was reduced.
Year
DOI
Venue
2017
10.1002/asi.23701
Periodicals
Field
DocType
Volume
Publication,Treatment and control groups,Data mining,Average treatment effect,Information retrieval,Citation impact,Propensity score matching,Computer science,Citation
Journal
68
Issue
ISSN
Citations 
9
2330-1635
2
PageRank 
References 
Authors
0.37
20
3
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Ruediger Mutz166639.58
Tobias Wolbring230.81
Hans-Dieter Daniel31338138.60