SHI Ben-ren, YANG Zhi-qiang, SHI Shui-ping
Citation analysis has been widely adopted to empirically investigate the structure of and scholarly activities in various disciplines, including the field of family business research. However, the factors affecting citation rates have not been extensively studied. Here, we examine the association between the citation rate and various characteristics of journals, articles and authors using a sample data of 832 family business research articles from 98 journals over the period from 1989 to 2010. Our analysis shows that there are asymmetric impacts of characteristics of journals, authors and articles on citation rate, social factors play a significant role in citation decisions in family business research, while the characteristics of individual article exhibit a relatively moderate influence on citation rate. These results cast doubt on the validity of using citation rates as an objective and unbiased tool for academic evaluation in family business research.
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