Contributing to the scientific literature: citation analysis of CIFOR publications

This paper documents a citation-counting exercise, listing the amount of times that CIFOR work was referenced in journal articles. The study examined a total of 1437 publications over the period from 1993 to mid-2004.

The main findings are:

• of the 1437 publications, 24% have been cited. Three-quarters of CIFOR publications have never been cited in an academic journal
• seventeen publications have been cited more than 20 times, and 5 more than 50 times. One article has been referred to 192 times
• journal articles have a much higher chance than any other publication of being cited. Refereed books and book chapters have a surprisingly low citation frequency
• two of the top four publications are not journal articles, indicating that quality, accessibility, topic, marketing and other factors are important, besides the medium of publication
• empirical work and overviews/syntheses are the dominant categories among the top 43 publications
• half of the top 43 publications have non-CIFOR first authors, indicating that CIFOR (scientists) benefit from partner collaboration
• CIFOR publications show no sign of falling citation rates even after 5–7 years. Fewer than 40% of the citations appear within the first four years of publication
• encouraging trends show that there is a steady increase in the number of publications, the proportion of refereed articles is higher than ever, and tha citations per cited article are higher for the latest crop of publications.

Recommendations to CIFOR are:

• publish more journal articles, and in better journals
• impact can be improved by expanding publishing beyond forestry journals into more general journals within the ecological/biological/conservation and economics/social science/development fields
• The CIFOR publication database can be improved to make it a better tool for analysing publication records and further developing the publication strategy.