Exploring the scientific impact of negative results

IF 3.4 2区管理学 Q2 COMPUTER SCIENCE, INTERDISCIPLINARY APPLICATIONS Journal of Informetrics Pub Date : 2023-12-08 DOI:10.1016/j.joi.2023.101481

Dan Tian , Xiao Hu , Yuchen Qian , Jiang Li

{"title":"Exploring the scientific impact of negative results","authors":"Dan Tian , Xiao Hu , Yuchen Qian , Jiang Li","doi":"10.1016/j.joi.2023.101481","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Negative results are a routine part of the scientific research journey, yet they often receive insufficient attention in scientific publications. In this study, we investigate the scientific impact of negative results by comparing the citations and citation context between negative and positive results. Specifically, we compared 159 negative result papers from three journals: <em>Journal of Negative Results in BioMedicine, PLoS One</em>, and <em>BMC Research Notes</em>, with 1,058 matched positive result papers authored by the same first and corresponding authors. The citation context was categorized according to three dimensions: citation aspect, citation purpose, and citation polarity. The first two were automatically provided by Citation Opinion Retrieval and Analysis (CORA), while citation polarity was manually annotated. Our analysis revealed several key findings. Firstly, negative results received 38.6 % fewer citations than positive results, even after controlling for bibliographic factors. Secondly, negative results were associated with a significantly higher proportion of negative citations when compared to positive results. Lastly, a higher proportion of negative results were negatively cited in the methods section.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":48662,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Informetrics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.4000,"publicationDate":"2023-12-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1751157723001062/pdfft?md5=ba6ec9728f987fad90b23e6230439373&pid=1-s2.0-S1751157723001062-main.pdf","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of Informetrics","FirstCategoryId":"91","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1751157723001062","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"COMPUTER SCIENCE, INTERDISCIPLINARY APPLICATIONS","Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Abstract

Negative results are a routine part of the scientific research journey, yet they often receive insufficient attention in scientific publications. In this study, we investigate the scientific impact of negative results by comparing the citations and citation context between negative and positive results. Specifically, we compared 159 negative result papers from three journals: Journal of Negative Results in BioMedicine, PLoS One, and BMC Research Notes, with 1,058 matched positive result papers authored by the same first and corresponding authors. The citation context was categorized according to three dimensions: citation aspect, citation purpose, and citation polarity. The first two were automatically provided by Citation Opinion Retrieval and Analysis (CORA), while citation polarity was manually annotated. Our analysis revealed several key findings. Firstly, negative results received 38.6 % fewer citations than positive results, even after controlling for bibliographic factors. Secondly, negative results were associated with a significantly higher proportion of negative citations when compared to positive results. Lastly, a higher proportion of negative results were negatively cited in the methods section.

查看原文

微信好友朋友圈 QQ好友复制链接

本刊更多论文

探讨负面结果的科学影响

负面结果是科学研究过程中的常规部分，但在科学出版物中却往往得不到足够的重视。在本研究中，我们通过比较负面结果和正面结果的引文和引文背景，研究了负面结果的科学影响。具体来说，我们比较了三种期刊中的 159 篇负面结果论文：生物医学负面结果期刊》（Journal of Negative Results in BioMedicine）、《PLoS One》（PLoS One）和《BMC 研究笔记》（BMC Research Notes）中的 159 篇负面结果论文，以及由相同第一作者和通讯作者撰写的 1058 篇匹配的正面结果论文。引文背景根据三个维度进行分类：引文方面、引文目的和引文极性。前两个维度由引文观点检索与分析（CORA）自动提供，而引文极性则由人工标注。我们的分析揭示了几个重要发现。首先，即使控制了书目因素，负面结果的被引次数也比正面结果少 38.6%。其次，与正面结果相比，负面结果被引用的比例明显更高。最后，负面结果在方法部分被负面引用的比例较高。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

求助全文

约1分钟内获得全文去求助

来源期刊

Journal of Informetrics Social Sciences-Library and Information Sciences

CiteScore

6.40

自引率

16.20%

发文量

期刊介绍： Journal of Informetrics (JOI) publishes rigorous high-quality research on quantitative aspects of information science. The main focus of the journal is on topics in bibliometrics, scientometrics, webometrics, patentometrics, altmetrics and research evaluation. Contributions studying informetric problems using methods from other quantitative fields, such as mathematics, statistics, computer science, economics and econometrics, and network science, are especially encouraged. JOI publishes both theoretical and empirical work. In general, case studies, for instance a bibliometric analysis focusing on a specific research field or a specific country, are not considered suitable for publication in JOI, unless they contain innovative methodological elements.