“TELL ME HOW MANY QUOTE YOU, AND I'LL TELL WHO YOU ARE”: STUDY ABOUT CITATIONS IN THE CONTEXT OF BRAZILIAN ACCOUNTING RESEARCH

ESTUDIO SOBRE CITACIONES EN EL CONTEXTO DE LA INVESTIGACIÓN CONTABLE BRASILEÑA

Abstract

There is a theoretical perspective that maintains that the various reasons that lead to articles being cited fall between two poles called universalist and social-constructivist. Characteristics such as originality of results and rigorous methodology are classified as universalist factors, and characteristics such as author's prestige and journal's prestige are classified as social-constructivist. With this perspective in mind, the research question of this dissertation is posed: what are factors that influence the citations received by a paper within the scenario of Brazilian accounting research? To answer this question, we collected data from 2,540 papers published in  Brazilian accounting academic journals between 2007 and 2012. The data analysis is based on descriptive statistics, Pearson's correlation and chi-square test, correspondence analysis, and negative binomial regression. We created 16 hypotheses of factors that influenced the number of times articles were quoted. The rejected hypotheses were the ones about the influence of the number of terms in the title or in the keywords of the paper, the number of pages, the position of the article and the type of edition, the proportion of female authors, and the data analysis approach (qualitative or quantitative). The following hypotheses were only statistically significant in certain circumstances, and thus, were only partially accepted: the influence of the number of authors, the gender of the first author, the academic degree of the first author, the Qualis grade of the journal, and the age of the journal. The totally accepted hypotheses were the ones about the influence of the factors such as the institutional affiliation of the first author, the journal in which the paper was published, the research line, and the number of references in the article. From these results, we can state that, in Brazil, the citation pattern of a paper is influenced by social-constructivist criteria, but to a lesser degree than that of the international context, in which more social-constructivist hypotheses are accepted. Therefore, in Brazil, the citation pattern is influenced by characteristics that are socially constructed and valued by the scientific community.