What Makes an Article be More Cited?

As discussed in a previous editorial (Mendes-Da-Silva, 2020), the rejection of articles is something that we can learn from, and have to live with, since this is part of a researcher’s professional routine. This, however, proceeds from a supposed common objective of business researchers: the publication of our studies and the desire that they be considered relevant to society. In this respect, one of the main ways in which we judge the level of interest in our works is the number of citations that they receive (Garfield, 1955; Lee, Law, & Ladkin, 2014) and their mentions in the media (Pulido, Redondo-Sama, Sordé-Marti, & Flecha, 2018). But what then makes an article more cited (Hall & Page, 2015)?

In most cases, scientists depend on the previous literature in their fields to develop new ideas. However, it is not possible, nor sensible, to cite all existing publications, because the volume of work in the literature is increasing extremely rapidly. Therefore, researchers generally follow or cite a small proportion of the publications that interest them (Bethard & Jurafsky, 2010; Yan, Tang, Liu, Shan, & Li, 2011).

Uzzi, Mukherjee, Stringer, and Jones (2013) analyzed 17.9 million articles covering every scientific field. They argue that science follows an almost universal pattern, i.e., the science of greatest impact is mainly based on exceptionally conventional combinations of previous works, but at the same time presents an intrusion of uncommon combinations. Articles that have these characteristics are twice as likely to be cited often, according to Uzzi et al. (2013).

As emphasized by Lee et al. (2014), there is space for research that examines what constitutes a large number of citations, whether they are in scientific journals or alternative channels outside the academic world; the RAC has an interest in publishing robust studies in this field. Identifying and examining quantifiable characteristics in publications (Gargouri et al., 2010) and investigating their associations with their number of citations appears to be something that is relevant to authors and editors in the business area. In a specific editorial, Garcia, Gattaz, and Gattaz (2019) dealt with the relevance that titles, abstracts, and keywords can have in the attractiveness of an article ceteris paribus.

That is, despite the quality of a given study, the same informational content can end up reaching a smaller audience essentially due to issues related to the communication of the study’s results (Jacques & Sebire, 2010). Thus, there are issues relative to the article itself and issues relative to the journal in which it is published. In respect to this, for example, Gargouri et al. (2010) argue that empirical results are in favor of a positive causal relationship between open access and the number of citations, but this belief is not shared by Kurtz and Henneken (2007). A preliminary exam of the literature dedicated to estimating the number of citations, conditioned on the attributes of the article, makes it possible to list, in a non-exhaustive manner, variables such as:

• Is it published in the english language;

• The diversity of the target audience for the subject addressed by the paper;

• The age of the article - older articles are cited more often;

• The h index of the authors - the higher the h index, the more the paper will tend to be cited;

• Whether it is available through open access;

• If it uses data that is open, does it include the code utilized;

• The title should suggest the study’s main result;

• Do the authors work at institutions based in different countries;

• Fame - a preeminent author participated in the paper;

• Author’s connections - authors who are socially more connected tend to be cited more often;

• Does the author have social preeminence in the scientific field;

• Author’s productivity;

• The use of provocative words in the title and the abstract, e.G., New, revealing, robust;

• The article’s title should be friendly to search engines containing its keywords;

• The abstract should include the keywords and the main result;

• The use of keywords throughout the article;

• Work on the article after its publication, sharing it in social media;

• The article meets the requisites required by seo (search engine optimization);

• The quality of the editorial process adopted by the journal in which it was published.

Inadequate behavior in the authorship and/or promotion of citations is a reality that needs to be properly addressed in order to inhibit epidemics of honorary authorship and artificial citations (Jacso, 2006; Kovacs, 2013). In terms of seeking citations in a way that neglects ethical rules, which is not impossible to observe on the part of authors, editors, and scientific journals, the RAC believes that the unrestricted observance of ethical rules that respect society is not something that is up for discussion.

EVOLUTION OF THE RAC EDITORIAL PROCESS DURING THE PERIOD FROM 2015 TO 2019

The editorial process of a journal should assure the quality of the articles that appear in it. There is no doubt that the highest editorial standards tend to demand efficiency in this process in terms of resources, ranging from time to finances. One of the most important particular elements to professionalizing the management of the editorial process is communication with the public interested in the journal, and in the case of the RAC we have sought to conduct this especially through the editorials in each edition. According to McGrail, Rickard, and Jones (2006), one of the most frequently considered aspects in the characterization of the distinction of a scientific journal is its typical acceptance or rejection rate for received submissions.

Thus, in line with contemporary editorial practices oriented towards transparency (Duflo, 2019), which permit greater transparency in the editorial process practiced by the RAC - Revista de Administração Contemporânea (Journal of Contemporary Administration), and also supply relevant information about the magazine to the interested public (Hargens, 1988), in this editorial I am presenting an overview of the evolution of editorial process indicators for the RAC (Mendes-Da-Silva, 2020) over the past five years.

Table 1 presents the evolution of the main numbers associated with the RAC’s editorial process. In Panel A we may observe that in 2015 almost 300 manuscripts were received including research articles, case studies, and technological articles. The number of manuscripts received by the RAC has continued to grow since then, reaching 425 manuscripts in 2019 (∆ % = 42.14). Part of the growth in this rejection rate is due to the editorial decision to reduce the number of published works, which has gradually decreased from 60 in 2015 to 40 in 2019, indicating an increase in selectivity for the works published in the journal.

Table 1
Editorial process indicators for the RAC - Journal of Contemporary Administration during the period 2015-2019.

Panel A: Relationship between the manuscripts received and published1
Year	# of documents received		# of documents published
2015	299		61
2016	361		38
2017	397		48
2018	303		45
2019	425		40
Panel B: Typical time required for the editorial process for works sent to peer review
Year	# of days for the editorial decision (average)	# of days for the editorial decision (median)	# of submissions sent to peer review2
2015	88	70	142
2016	77	65	133
2017	117	77	165
2018	130	110	114
2019	107	82	120

• Note.
RAC - Journal of Contemporary AdministrationRACRevista de Administração Contemporânea, 22https://doi.org/10.1590/1982-7849rac2018180281)
• ¹
  Every year there is a group of people who act as reviewers. In 2015, there were 250 reviewers; in 2016, there were 247; in 2017, there were 236; in 2018, there were 176; and in 2019, there were 213 individuals who made up our group of volunteers who, using a double-blind review system, reviewed the submitted works.
• ²
  This includes all types of documents received by the RAC, i.e., research articles, case studies, and technological articles, but does not include editorials.

Panel B of Table 1 allows us to evaluate that of the 425 submissions received in 2019 (see Panel A in Table 1), just 120 were forwarded to peer review, which suggests that a significant portion of the submissions did not pass the desk review phase. The main reason for desk rejections is a lack of clarity in terms of the manuscript’s effective contribution to its field of knowledge, as well as a lack of robust characteristics in the methodological procedures adopted. Other less frequent reasons were detailed in the RAC editorial of our last issue (Mendes-Da-Silva, 2020).

In Panel B of Table 1, we can verify that the average editorial cycle lasts roughly 100 days, with approximately 50% of the submissions receiving a final decision within 90 days. It should be noted that the RAC maintains its evaluation process based on the principle of academic reciprocity, according to which we ask authors submitting manuscripts to evaluate works, in exchange for the detailed evaluation of the work that they receive from other colleagues (Mendes-Da-Silva, 2018a). In this sense, invariably there is a need to invite at least five people, until we have at least two peers. This editorial effort induces an inevitable increase in typical evaluation times in the editorial process. We hope that, to the extent that there is a greater disposition of community members to evaluate works, the submission cycle will be substantially shorter.

According to Table 2, Revise and Resubmit (R&R) decisions have become less frequent since 2015, when more than 30% of the submissions went through this process, with a little more than 15% of the 299 received submissions being accepted. Thus, in 2018, of the 303 submissions received, a little more than 20% went through the R&R process, with 14.5% being accepted. In 2019, the general numbers continued to change: we received 425 submissions, with 56 pending; of those, 40.2% received desk rejections, as opposed to 27.8% in 2015. The fluid situation of this movement is basically the following: in enriching the criteria for the desk review, we are preserving a scarce and valuable resource, and this is the anonymous reviewer who makes careful judgments and contributions to the authors. In addition, with potentially more prompt responses for individual authors, we promote greater autonomy for these authors to find alternative ways to publish their works

Table 2
Frequency of editorial decisions attributed to manuscripts submitted to the RAC - Journal of Contemporary Administration during the period 2015-2019.

Year of submission	Accepted N (%)	Pending N (%)	Rejected N (%)	Desk rejects N (%)	R&R N (%)	Archived N (%)	Total1 N (%)
2015	45	-	58	83	93	20	299
	(15.1)	-	(19.4)	(27.8)	(31.1)	(6.7)	(100.0)
2016	36	-	57	155	89	24	361
	(10.0)	-	(15.8)	(42.9)	(24.7)	(6.6)	(100.0)
2017	37	-	63	166	107	24	397
	(9.3)	-	(15.9)	(41.8)	(27.0)	(6.0)	(100.0)
2018	44	-	52	132	61	14	303
	(14.5)	-	(17.2)	(43.6)	(20.1)	(4.6)	(100.0)
2019	38	56	71	171	73	16	425
	(8.9)	(13.2)	(16.7)	(40.2)	(17.2)	(3.8)	(100.0)

• Note.
RAC - Journal of Contemporary Administration
• ¹
  This appears in the second column of Table 1 in Panel A.

Bearing in mind the current scope of the RAC, i.e., functioning from a regional perspective with an interdisciplinary spirit, seeking to be positioned in the vanguard of technological and methodological innovation, and welcoming substantive and empirical contributions that investigate and examine significant economic, social, and political issues, the magazine receives contributions from research developed in various fields of knowledge in the area of business. The areas of special interest to the RAC include environmental management; production, distribution, and the consumption of resources; financial, capital, and corporate finance markets; the food chain; entrepreneurship; the labor market; and organizational and individual behavior. These research areas have been presented and published by the RAC in recent years as illustrated in Figure 1.

Figure 1
Frequency of new articles published by the RAC — Journal of Contemporary Administration by area of business knowledge (for the period 2015-2019).

Observing Figure 1, we can see that the areas of international management, agrobusiness management, and operations and logistics management make up a subgroup with a smaller presence in the RAC in recent years. In parallel, the areas of organizational studies, finance and managerial control, and organizational strategy, together with marketing appear among those that most often appeared in issues of the RAC in the last five years. Among the most stable areas in terms of the number of works published in the RAC is information management.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ABOUT THE WORKS PUBLISHED BY THE RAC

Just as the research topics and methods employed have changed over time, there have been innovations in the editorial process itself. In this sense, the RAC, during the past 24 months, has begun publishing additional information about the process involved in each published work, through the adoption of a new layout for documents published on a new website. Thus, for each article since then you can find, in addition to what was historically reported:

1. The number of invitations made to anonymous reviewers until the editorial decision in each round was made. This makes it possible to inform the community of the editorial effort made to evaluate the published works, and especially helps authors assess the motives why sometimes the time spent in the evaluation exceeds the expected span.

2. The adoption of a structured abstract to facilitate the reading of the article in terms of information typically found in the abstract of a scientific document.

3. The classification codes according to the system originated by the Journal of Economic Literature (JEL) to improve the distribution of, and provide more visibility to, the works published by the RAC within the business researcher community.

4. The identity of the editors and reviewers of the article as suggested and discussed by Mendes-Da-Silva (2019a, 2019b). In the case of reviewers, this is always with their consent prior to the article’s publication. With this procedure, the RAC hopes to contribute to the public recognition of the voluntary work performed by reviewing colleagues. In addition, it permits the identification of communities interested in certain subjects addressed in published articles.

5. The location of article data, materials, and codes if applicable (Martins, 2020). In other words, the situation of the article in respect to the adopted policy of open data, that is, whether it has open data and where this data is. When this is not the policy followed, the authors’ reason for not sharing the data, materials, and codes will be provided together with the published article.

6. The existence of financing for the published study, in order to recognize the contribution of research stimulation agencies or any other source of finance employed in the execution of the study.

7. The method adopted for the article’s evaluation.

8. The method adopted to monitor plagiarism.

9. The contributions made to merit authorship of the articles in order to recognize the individual effort of each author, and mainly to discourage the occurrence of ceremonial authors, as pointed out by Rossoni (2018).

10. The existence of conflicts of interest.

These recent RAC initiatives, added to others that will be implemented, are mainly designed to promote the impact of works published in this journal in the broadest sense of the word ‘impact’, which is not restricted to the number of citations made by the academic community. In recent years, we have seen the rise of metrics that intend to measure this impact. Among the proxies that have gained space and recognition, we may cite the social media (Mendes-Da-Silva, 2018b; Pulido et al., 2018).

The journal should not only make an effort to reach its public, but also other players involved in the process, e.g., authors who can develop their communication abilities on the individual level, and research institutions that can allocate resources and construct strategies and procedures directed towards the broad communication of the research developed and communicated by their contributors. How have our articles been received by society? This is a question that we should reflect and act upon, above all in moments like the current one, when the demands of society on the scientific community have substantially intensified.

• Copyrights
  RAC owns the copyright to this content.

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Edited by

SCIENTIFIC EDITORIAL BOARD AND EDITORIAL TEAM FOR THIS ISSUE:

Editorial Council

Anielson Barbosa da Silva (UFPB, João Pessoa, Brazil)

Antonio Carlos Gastaud Maçada (UFRGS, Porto Alegre, Brazil)

Ely Laureano Paiva (FGV, São Paulo, Brazil)

Fabio Vizeu Ferreira (UP, Curitiba, Brazil)

Maria José Tonelli (FGV, São Paulo, Brazil)

Rogério Hermida Quintella (NPGA/UFBA, Salvador, Brazil)

Valmir Emil Hoffmann (UnB, Brasília, Brazil)

Wesley Mendes-da-Silva (EAESP/FGV, São Paulo, Brazil)

Editor-in-Chief

Wesley Mendes-da-Silva (EAESP/FGV, São Paulo, Brazil)

Associate Editors

Fabio Caldieraro (EBAPE/FGV, São Paulo, Brazil)

Gilnei Luiz de Moura (UFSM, Santa Maria, Brazil)

Henrique Castro Martins (IAG PUC-Rio, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)

Ismael Ali Ali (Kent State University, Ohio, USA)

Marcus Cunha Junior (University of Georgia, USA)

Paula Castro Pires de Souza Chimenti (UFRJ/Coppead, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)

Paulo César Matui (UniGranRio, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)

Samy Dana (FGV/EAESP, São Paulo, Brazil)

Corpo Editorial Científico

André Luiz Maranhão de Souza-Leão (UFPE, Recife, Brazil)

Aureliano Angel Bressan (CEPEAD/UFMG, Belo Horizonte, Brazil)

Bryan Husted (York University, Canada)

Carlos M. Rodriguez (Delaware State University, USA)

Cristiana Cerqueira Leal (Universidade do Minho, Portugal)

Diógenes de Souza Bido (Mackenzie, São Paulo, Brazil)

Erica Piros Kovacs (Kelley School of Business/Indiana University, USA)

Elin Merethe Oftedal (University of Tromsø, Norway)

Emilio Jose Monteiro Arruda Filho (Unama, Belém, Brazil)

Fábio Frezatti (FEA/USP, São Paulo, Brazil)

Felipe Monteiro (Wharton/University of Pennsylvania, USA)

Howard J. Rush (University of Brighton, United Kingdom)

James Robert Moon Junior (Georgia Institute of Technology, USA)

John L. Campbell (University of Georgia, USA)

José Antônio Puppim de Oliveira (United Nations University, Yokohama, Japan)

Julián Cárdenas (Freie Universität, Berlin, Germany)

Lucas Barros (FEA/USP, São Paulo, Brazil)

Luciano Rossoni (UniGranRio, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)

M. Philippe Protin (Université Grenoble Alpes, France)

Paulo Estevão Cruvinel (Embrapa Instrumentação, São Carlos, Brazil)

Rodrigo Bandeira de Mello (Merrimack College, USA)

Rodrigo Verdi (MIT Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, USA)

Valter Afonso Vieira, (UEM, Maringá, Brazil)

Wagner Kamakura (Jones Graduate School of Business, Rice University, Houston, USA)

Editing

Typesetting and normalization to APA standards: Kler Godoy (ANPAD, Maringá, Brazil); Simone L. L. Rafael (ANPAD, Maringá, Brazil).

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  24 July 2020
• Date of issue
  Nov-Dec 2020