| The non-citation rate refers to the proportion of articles that do not receive a single citation within a given time frame following their publication.It is a common phenomenon in science publication domain.However,the current literature on citation distribution gives more focus on the "hits",namely highly-cited or mostly focused papers,while the "misses",namely lowly-cited or uncited papers,hardly get attention from scholars at home and abroad.Although study on uncitedness is not a very substantial topic in Scientometrics field,results of studying on time-dependent regularity of and influencing factors on percentage of uncited papers can,to some degree,reflect the situation of circulation and utilization of literature,and quality of literature published by different entities,such as researchers and publishers,as well as their research capabilities and impact.Such results can also help researchers see their deficiencies,thus knowing how to lower the percentage of their uncited papers and improve their research impact.Unfortunately,there are fewer empirical studies on the time-dependent patterns of the percentage of never-cited papers,and on the factors influencing the non-citation rate,as well as on what theoretical models to analyze them.Besides,without feasible sample database to support such empirical studies.So,for solving such problems,this paper makes some empirical studies mainly focusing on the following several aspects:Firstly,we perform an empirical analysis to regularities on time-dependent distribution of the percentages of never-cited papers in a series of different,consecutive citation time windows following their publication in our selected thirty six sample journals belong to six different disciplines.Through empirical analysis,we find some common patterns or regularities of development within journals:"The time-dependent distributions of the percentages of never-cited papers in a fixed collection of publications for different journals in different disciplines show strikingly persistent similarities.The distributions form a series of concave curves characterised by "dropping rapidly for the first few years,and then dropping more slowly,up to a very low and stable base line."" Furthermore,we also found some different patterns,such as the time-dependent distributions of the percentages of never-cited papers for some journals form some convex curves characterised by "dropping more slowly for the first many years,and then dropping more rapidly,up to a very low and stable base line." Also,the time-dependent distributions of the percentages of never-cited papers for som journals with minority language and non-native language form a series of curves with different shapes.Secondly,we also perform an empirical analysis to regularities on annual change distribution of the percentages of never-cited papers in a fixed citation time window following their publication in different years.Through empirical analysis,we find some common patterns.Such as there is very large fluctuation for annual change of the percentages of never-cited papers in a fixed citation time window of publication year,however,there has very low fluctuation for annual change of the percentages of never-cited papers in a fixed citation time window of three years and six years following their publication in different year between 1990 and 2010,and shows descending trend year by year.The descending trend for international journals with low impact factor and domestic journals is more obvious,which indicates that such journals are being in rapid development stage.Besides,there is higher percentage of uncited articles and unobvious descending trend for those journals with minority language and non-native language.Last but not least,based on data obtained by questionnaire and panel data acquired by statistical analysis,we perform a structural equation model analysis and panel data model analysis to the mutual relations and related degrees between non-citation rate and its influencing factors.Through empirical analysis,we find some meaningful conclusions.① most of respondents consider "short publication time","low quality of content","unnoticed and old topic","source journal with low impact factor" as main reasons leading to the emergence of uncited papers.They also think that papers belong to research hotspots can getting cited very easily,and the primary reason that they don’t change their uncited papers into cited papers by self-citation is that their current research directions have large difference from the former research directions.Furthermore,they also think some types of papers,such as Notes,Comments and Letter,etc,and papers with 1000-2000 words or more than 15000 words hardly getting eited,while papers of "Reviews" types or papers with 4000-8000 words can getting cited very easily.②"contents and topics of papers"and "academic status of journal" are two types of main factors influencing uncitedness,their influence is far higher than influence of factors belong to "personal features of papers" category and "publicity and recommendation" category.Five factors belong to "contents and topics of papers" category and "academic status of source journal" category including "high quality of papers","interdisciplinarity of paper content","creative topic","good reputation of journal" and "source journals with high impact factor" have larger influence on whether easily getting cited for papers③there exists reverse correlation relation between "percentage of never-cited papers in a fixed citation time window of same year following their publication in journals" and such factors as "impact factor of source journal","age of source journal","average number of authors each paper of source journal","average number of pages each paper of source jounal","average number of references each paper of source journal" and "issues of source journal".There is same reverse correlation relation between "percentage of never-cited papers in a fixed citation time window of three years after their publication in journals" and those factors.However,there exists positive correlation relation between "Number of interdisciplinarity involved by source journal" and "percentage of never-cited papers in a fixed citation time window of three years and six years following their publication in journals".Three factors such as "average number of authors each paper","average number of references each paper" and "issues of source journal" no longer exert an influence on percentage of never-cited papers in a fixed citation time window of six years following their publication in journals.Furthermore,there begins to occur positive correlation relation between "impact factor of source journal" and "percentage of never-cited papers in a fixed citation time window of six years following their publication in journals".That is to say,the improvement of impact factor of source journalimproves percentage of never-cited papers in a fixed citation time window of six years following their publication in journals,not lowers it.Worthy of note is that "number of papers of source journal" has a very small and negligible impact on percentage of never-cited papers in a fixed citation time window of same year,three years and six years following their publication in journals. |
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