Opening research data contributes to the citations of related research articles: Evidence from Data in Brief

This paper explores the effect of publishing a data paper in the Open Access journal Data in Brief (DIB) on the citation counts of the related research paper. Using regression analysis, citation content analysis and a survey method, we investigate whether research papers with a related data paper have higher citation counts and the potential reasons. After controlling variables that correlate with the citation counts, research papers with a related data paper were found to have higher citation counts than those published in the same issue of the same journal. Next, we explored the causal relationship between the two variables by surveying the corresponding authors of 618 papers who shared datasets in DIB from 2014 to 2021. The results show that the authors acknowledge the benefits of sharing data in DIB, including citation increase and career reputation enhancement. We further explored how the data papers in DIB increase the citations of the related research papers by using citation content analysis. We found that scientists co-cite the data papers and their related research papers for the purpose of reusing the underlying data or portraying a better understanding of the underlying data and related research articles.