title: A small world of citations? The influence of collaboration networks on citation practices.
abstract: This paper examines the proximity of authors to those they cite using degrees of separation in a co-author network, essentially using collaboration networks to expand on the notion of self-citations. While the proportion of direct self-citations (including co-authors of both citing and cited papers) is relatively constant in time and across specialties in the natural sciences (10% of references) and the social sciences (20%), the same cannot be said for citations to authors who are members of the co-author network. Differences between fields and trends over time lie not only in the degree of co-authorship which defines the large-scale topology of the collaboration network, but also in the referencing practices within a given discipline, computed by defining a propensity to cite at a given distance within the collaboration network. Overall, there is little tendency to cite those nearby in the collaboration network, excluding direct self-citations. These results are interpreted in terms of small-scale structure, field-specific citation practices, and the value of local co-author networks for the production of knowledge and for the accumulation of symbolic capital. Given the various levels of integration between co-authors, our findings shed light on the question of the availability of 'arm's length' expert reviewers of grant applications and manuscripts.
authors.affiliation: Centre interuniversitaire de recherche sur la science et la technologie, Université du Québec à Montréal, Montréal, Québec Canada. matt.l.wallace@gmail.com
authors.forename: Matthew L
authors.initials: ML
authors.lastname: Wallace
authors.forename: Vincent
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Larivière
authors.forename: Yves
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Gingras
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D001319:Authorship; D003299:Cooperative Behavior; D006801:Humans; D015233:Models, Statistical; D011364:Professional Practice / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*