Weighted citation: An indicator of an article's prestige

TL;DR

This paper introduces weighted citation as a novel metric to measure an article's prestige by considering journal impact and citation timing, distinguishing it from traditional popularity metrics.

Contribution

It proposes a new weighted citation technique that accounts for journal impact and citation timing to better assess article prestige.

Findings

Weighted citation correlates with traditional citation counts.

Most articles show similar prestige and popularity levels.

Weighted citation provides a different perspective on article impact.

Abstract

We propose using the technique of weighted citation to measure an article's prestige. The technique allocates a different weight to each reference by taking into account the impact of citing journals and citation time intervals. Weighted citation captures prestige, whereas citation counts capture popularity. We compare the value variances for popularity and prestige for articles published in the Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology from 1998 to 2007, and find that the majority have comparable status.