Title
Reciprocity and impact in academic careers
Abstract
The growing importance of citation-based bibliometric indicators in shaping the prospects of academic careers incentivizes scientists to boost the numbers of citations they receive. Whereas the exploitation of self-citations has been extensively documented, the impact of reciprocated citations has not yet been studied. We study reciprocity in a citation network of authors, and compare it with the average reciprocity computed in an ensemble of null network models. We show that obtaining citations through reciprocity correlates negatively with an impactful career in the long term. Nevertheless, at the aggregate level we show evidence of a steady increase in reciprocity over the years, largely fuelled by the citations reciprocated between coauthors. Our results characterize the structure of author networks in a time of increasing emphasis on citation-based indicators, and we discuss their implications towards a fairer assessment of academic impact.
Year
DOI
Venue
2019
10.1140/epjds/s13688-019-0199-3
EPJ Data Science
Keywords
Field
DocType
Reciprocity, Academic career, Network science, Statistical validation
Data science,Network science,Computer science,Citation,Microeconomics,Citation network,Reciprocity (social psychology)
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
8
1
2193-1127
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
3
0.42
0
Authors
8
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Weihua Li171.23
Weihua Li271.23
Tomaso Aste35711.62
Tomaso Aste45711.62
Fabio Caccioli5234.15
Fabio Caccioli6234.15
Giacomo Livan793.78
Giacomo Livan893.78