Page 134 - JOURNAL OF LIBRARY SCIENCE IN CHINA 2018 Vol. 43

134 Journal of Library Science in China, Vol.9, 2017

Regardless of the theoretical or application aspect, this citation-based system does have very
significant limitations. First, while academic influence should be a multi-dimensional concept,
citation only reflects the formal and documented knowledge impact. In the process of academic
exchange, it is frequently impossible for citation data to record academic influence in the broader
scope of downloading, reading, transmission, learning, practical applications, etc. This absence
may cause the fundamental scientific task of “theory guiding practice” to be neglected, or even
gives rise to the disconnect between academic research and practical application under the
evaluation system. Thus, this is a problem worthy of close attention regarding the application
of citation analysis. Second, the citation behavior differs significantly across various disciplines
and fields. Due to the fact that the citation densities of life sciences, physics, chemistry and other
basic natural sciences are usually higher than those of the humanities, social sciences and applied
engineering disciplines, the citation method is congenitally deficient under the basic evaluation
principle of “fairness”. In this context, a discipline-based evaluation has been proposed many
times, but an all-sided consideration can be very difficult due to the confinement by resource
scarcity in actual operations. In particular, citation density may also differ from one research
direction to another even within the same discipline or field. For instance, in a discipline as small
in volume as Library and Information Science, those international journals with a relatively
high impact factor are also concentrated in information systems, bibliometrics and a few other
directions. Third, citation motive can be considerably complex (Brooks, 1985), for which each
citation behavior may involve different influence identifications, including negative citation,
self-citation, reference sources used to support detailed discussions, theories introduced as the
conceptual bases of articles and so forth. Adopting influence value as the judgment criterion
immediately uncovers the whole picture. Most of the current citations take no account of semantics
and only identify various citations uniformly by the same influence level, which gives rise to the
extensive methodology of citation analysis.
It is clear that the robustness of citation data is subject to three uncertain factors, i.e., influence
dimension, discipline difference and behavioral motive, for which the method cannot be immune
from theoretical and practical disputes. Surely, this feature of citation data also provides three
vital perspectives of improvement, that is, increasing a new dimension of influence analysis,
considering the features of applied disciplines and supplementing differential behavior motive
data.

1.2 Emergence, values and features of the magnitude of data usage for academic
literature

1) Research and development of usage data
Research on the usage of academic literature can be expected to provide a supplementary view
for citation analysis. In terms of the influence dimension, the usage of academic literature by