Author(s): Nicholas, David ; Abrizah, Abdullah ; Clark, David ; Rodríguez‐Bravo, Blanca ; Revez, Jorge, 1980- ; Herman, Eti ; Świgoń, Marzena ; Xu, Jie ; Watkinson, Anthony
Date: 2025
Persistent ID: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.5/102083
Origin: Repositório da Universidade de Lisboa
Subject(s): Artificial intelligence; Early career researchers
This paper, part of the Harbingers project studying early career researchers (ECRs), focuses on the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on scholarly communications (https://ciber-research.com/harbingers-3/index.html). It investigates citations and citing, its purpose, function and use, especially in respect to reputation, trust, publishing and AI. We also cover journal impact factors, H-index, Scopus, Web of Science and Google Scholar. All of this, regarding a research community, to whom citations have special reputational and career-advancing value. This interview-based study covers a convenience sample of 91 ECRs from all disciplines and half a dozen countries. Furthermore, this study has been conducted with minimal prompting about citations, so providing a fresh feel by using the voices of ECRs wherever possible. Findings include: (1) citations are all-pervasive, although cropping up mostly in the reputational and trust arenas; (2) citations remain a major force in determining what is read, where to publish and what to trust; (3) there are no signs their value is diminishing; if anything, the opposite is true; (4) AI has given a boost to their use—primarily as a validity check; (5) there are strong signs that altmetrics are being taken up. Note, this was a preliminary study working with a convenience sample attempting to inform a future study. Our findings should therefore be treated more as early observations.
