Page 199 - JOURNAL OF LIBRARY SCIENCE IN CHINA 2018 Vol. 44

198
198 Journal of Library Science in China, Vol.10, 2018

performing connection functions in the networks.
This study suggests that the development of innovative measures is the basis of information
networks research. In the meanwhile, the measures of link and its components in information
networks are key to measuring the information networks. The indirect measures has provided new
ideas for the investigation of links in information networks. The deletion algorithm is just one of
the indirect measure methods. It is expected that the combination of direct and indirect measure
methods will lead to the complete framework of information network analysis.

A study on citing behavior based on the theory of information use
environment: A cited references analysis

〇a*
XIE Juan, CHENG Ying〇, SUN Jianjun & KE Qing
Although information behavior and informetrics are very popular in the field of Information
Science, they have seldom been combined in empirical studies. It is worth trying to study citing
behavior from the perspective of informetrics. While citation context analysis and survey have
been used for studying on citation motivation and the function of references, little attention has
been paid to authors’ citing behavior itself or its influencing factors. It is said that cited references
analysis has the advantage over these two methods and can compile a profile of citing scientists.
Citing behavior is a kind of information use behavior, because of which the characteristics and
influencing factors can be explored comprehensively based on Taylor’s theory of Information
Use Environment (IUE). Consequently, this study is intended to operationalize the first three
elements in IUE as the features of authors, their institutional environments and problems. The
fourth element, the features of references, is measured according to cited references analysis. Then,
sample articles in CSSCI in Library & Information Science are collected randomly and coded
manually following the operationalization through CNKI, websites and personal homepages.
Correlation analysis and nonparametric test are conducted to find out the influencing factors of
citing behavior and regression analysis is used to probe into the influencing factors of the citing
preference of information value. It is found that: ① Authors with higher education prefer citing
more publications with high quality, conference papers and foreign-language publications. ②
Younger, male authors cite more and rely on a variety of information resources. ③ Students,
researchers and teachers use various information resources, compared with librarians and
engineers. ④ Assistant professors prefer foreign language publications and publications with high
quality when compared to professors and associate professors. ⑤ Authors affiliated with different
types and ranks of institutions behave differently when citing. ⑥ Authors studying on various
topics have different citation pattern. It is evidenced that IUE can be used for the conceptual and

* Correspondence should be addressed to CHENG Ying, Email: chengy@nju.edu.cn, ORCID: 0000-0002-0664-7206