Does Publicity in the Science Press Drive Citations?

TL;DR

This study quantifies how publicity in the science press, such as highlighting, influences research paper citations, revealing that certain platforms significantly boost citation counts depending on their vetting level.

Contribution

It provides a quantitative analysis of the citation advantage conferred by different highlighting platforms in the science press, linking vetting levels to citation impact.

Findings

Viewpoint in Physics magazine has the strongest citation impact.

Highlighting platforms with higher vetting levels lead to greater citation advantages.

The hierarchical pattern of citation benefits correlates with the importance vetting process.

Abstract

We study how publicity in the science press, in the form of highlighting, affects the citations of research papers. Using multiple linear regression, we quantify the citation advantage associated with several highlighting platforms for papers published in Physical Review Letters (PRL) from 2008-2018. We thus find that the strongest predictor of citation accrual is a Viewpoint in Physics magazine, followed by a Research Highlight in Nature, an Editors' Suggestion in PRL, and a Research Highlight in Nature Physics. A similar hierarchical pattern is found when we search for extreme, not average, citation accrual, in the form a paper being listed among the top-1% cited papers in physics by Clarivate Analytics. The citation advantage of each highlighting platform is stratified according to the degree of vetting for importance that the manuscript received during peer review. This implies that we can view highlighting platforms as predictors of citation accrual, with varying degrees of strength that mirror each platform's vetting level.