Reciprocity and success in academic careers

TL;DR

This paper investigates how reciprocal citations influence academic success, revealing that while individual reciprocated citations may negatively correlate with career success, overall reciprocity has increased over time, especially among coauthors.

Contribution

It provides the first large-scale analysis of reciprocity in citation networks and its implications for evaluating academic impact.

Findings

Reciprocity correlates negatively with long-term career success.

Overall reciprocity in citation networks has increased over the years.

Coauthor exchanges significantly contribute to rising reciprocity.

Abstract

The growing importance of citation-based bibliometric indicators in shaping the prospects of academic careers incentivizes scientists to boost the numbers of citations they receive. Whereas the exploitation of self-citations has been extensively documented, the impact of reciprocated citations has not yet been studied. We study reciprocity in a citation network of authors, and compare it with the average reciprocity computed in an ensemble of null network models. We show that obtaining citations through reciprocity correlates negatively with a successful career in the long term. Nevertheless, at the aggregate level we show evidence of a steady increase in reciprocity over the years, largely fuelled by the exchange of citations between coauthors. Our results characterize the structure of author networks in a time of increasing emphasis on citation-based indicators, and we discuss their implications towards a fairer assessment of academic impact.