Extrinsic Factors Affecting Citation Frequencies of Research Articles

In this chapter, we discuss what factors, and to what extent, exert influence on citation rates of research articles, mainly addressing to the influence of those factors that are not directly related to the quality or content of articles (extrinsic factors). First, extrinsic factors that may influence the citation rate are classified, and those which are focused on in this chapter and the measures for each of these factors are selected. Next, the main studies having investigated the influence of the selected factors on the citation frequency of articles are comprehensively reviewed. Then, the research done by the authors is described that used the selected measures for those extrinsic factors. In this research we aimed to examine whether there are some general trends across subject fields regarding the factors that affect the citation frequency of articles. Finally, the results obtained by our research are discussed together with those by other studies.