CITATIONS. When you write a paper, you cite other researchers who preceded you. Once your paper is published, other scholars will cite you. Forty years ago, the Institute for Scientific Information developed software to count how many times an article was cited. Today that technology is incorporated in Google Scholar. Your article citation counts are an important part of your academic record. You are more likely to be cited if you publish in a leading journal. Because the software can filter out self-citations, you can’t boost your numbers simply by repeatedly citing yourself! We knew a distinguished scholar who applied a new analytical technique but made a mistake. After that, other researchers warned, “Be sure not to do what Jones (not his real name) did.” Jones, however, wound up with an impressively high citation score. If you write the first paper in an area, you can reach the enviable place where others feel that citing your article is almost mandatory.
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