Systematic Bias in the Progress of Research

We analyze the extent to which citing practices may be driven by strategic considerations. The discontinuation of the Journal of Business (JB) in 2006 for extraneous reasons serves as an exogenous shock for analyzing strategic citing behavior. Using a difference-in-differences analysis, we find that...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Journal of political economy 2021-09, Vol.129 (9), p.2666-2719
Main Authors: Rubin, Amir, Rubin, Eran
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Bias
Citations
Discontinued
Economic theory
Political economy
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Summary:We analyze the extent to which citing practices may be driven by strategic considerations. The discontinuation of the Journal of Business (JB) in 2006 for extraneous reasons serves as an exogenous shock for analyzing strategic citing behavior. Using a difference-in-differences analysis, we find that articles published in JB before 2006 experienced a relative reduction in citations of approximately 20% after 2006. Since the discontinuation of JB is unrelated to the scientific contributions of its articles, the results imply that the referencing of articles is systematically affected by strategic considerations, which hinders scientific progress.
ISSN:0022-3808
1537-534X
DOI:10.1086/715021