Are half of the published papers in top-management-journals never cited? Refuting the myth and examining the reason for its creation

ABSTRACT

A stylised fact in bibliometric research is that in the field of management studies, half or more of the papers published are never cited. If true, this implies that efforts and resources are considerably wasted because half of the academic work is not considered worthy by the same community that developed them. We studied a sample of 2777 papers published in 20 journals and representing different levels of quality. Of these, only 191 papers, representing 6.5% of the sample, were never cited, suggesting that the aforementioned stylised fact is a myth. We identified the factors that contribute to the level of citations, including the ranking of the journal in the quality list, time since last citation, and number of authors. The implications discussed suggest a need for reflection regarding the relevance of the factors that predict future citations.

KEYWORDS:

• Publishing
• citation
• knowledge creation
• uncitedness
• myth

Acknowledgements

The authors thank the anonymous reviewer who suggested testing the possibility of curvilinear relationships.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).