Exploring the effects of journal article features: Implications for automated prediction of scholarly impact
Feb 28, 2025
About this article
Article Category: Research Papers
Published Online: Feb 28, 2025
Page range: 13 - 39
Received: Sep 03, 2024
Accepted: Feb 07, 2025
DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/jdis-2025-0010
Keywords
© 2025 Giovanni Abramo et al., published by Sciendo
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Estimates of linear models for the log impact of articles with fixed effects for the journals overall_
Coef. | Std Err. | t | P>t | [95% Conf. Interval] | |||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
X1 | (log) n. authors | 0.085 | 0.001 | 66.1 | <0.01 | 0.082 | 0.087 |
X2 | (log) n. countries | 0.041 | 0.002 | 24.4 | <0.01 | 0.037 | 0.044 |
X3 | (log) avg authors quality | 0.224 | 0.001 | 242.3 | <0.01 | 0.222 | 0.226 |
X4 | Women | -0.024 | 0.001 | -17.1 | <0.01 | -0.026 | -0.021 |
X5 | English | -0.022 | 0.002 | -15.0 | <0.01 | -0.025 | -0.020 |
X6 | open access | 0.070 | 0.002 | 38.5 | <0.01 | 0.066 | 0.073 |
X7 | (log) n. pages | 0.200 | 0.002 | 86.8 | <0.01 | 0.195 | 0.204 |
X8 | (log) n. references | 0.268 | 0.002 | 165.8 | <0.01 | 0.265 | 0.271 |
X9 | % references in WoS | 0.002 | 0.000 | 39.2 | <0.01 | 0.002 | 0.002 |
X10 | (log) cited articles age | -0.374 | 0.002 | -231.6 | <0.01 | -0.377 | -0.370 |
X11 | (log) cited articles impact | 0.061 | 0.001 | 97.5 | <0.01 | 0.060 | 0.063 |
Intercept | -1.436 | 0.007 | -201.9 | <0.01 | -1.450 | -1.422 |
Number of articles per area of the journal_
Area | N. of articles | |
---|---|---|
1 | Arts and Humanities | 17,816 |
2 | Biology | 251,921 |
3 | Biomedical Research | 164,805 |
4 | Chemistry | 194,405 |
5 | Clinical Medicine | 316,828 |
6 | Earth and Space Sciences | 116,736 |
7 | Economics | 40,308 |
8 | Engineering | 349,058 |
9 | Law, political and social sciences | 65,344 |
10 | Mathematics | 57,718 |
11 | Multidisciplinary Sciences | 66,985 |
12 | Physics | 227,595 |
13 | Psychology | 30,896 |
Total | 1,900,415 |
Summary statistics of the variables of the dataset (1,427,670 articles)_
Variable | Mean | Std dev. | Min | Max | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Y | impact | 0.871 | 1.992 | 0 | 1,039.638 |
X1 | n. authors | 5.476 | 3.959 | 1 | 100 |
X2 | n. countries | 1.417 | 0.894 | 1 | 44 |
X3 | avg authors quality | 1.015 | 1.053 | 0.001 | 204.831 |
X4 | Women | 0.605 | 0.489 | 0 | 1 |
X5 | English | 0.395 | 0.489 | 0 | 1 |
X6 | open access | 0.453 | 0.498 | 0 | 1 |
X7 | n. pages | 11.000 | 6.259 | 1 | 100 |
X8 | n. references | 41.317 | 22.570 | 1 | 200 |
X9 | % references in WoS | 76.874 | 20.630 | 0.515 | 100 |
X10 | cited articles age | 9.431 | 3.716 | 0 | 37 |
X11 | cited articles impact | 11.800 | 23.462 | 0.010 | 1,995.620 |
Estimates of linear models for the log impact of the articles with fixed effects for the journals (standard errors in parenthesis)‡, by area_
Area |
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
X1 (log) n. authors | 0.079 | 0.082 | 0.072 | 0.044 | 0.088 | 0.105 | 0.122 | 0.071 | 0.069 | 0.087 | 0.111 | 0.084 | 0.057 |
(0.018) | (0.003) | (0.004) | (0.003) | (0.003) | (0.004) | (0.009) | (0.003) | (0.007) | (0.009) | (0.005) | (0.003) | (0.009) | |
X2 (log) n. countries | 0.109 | 0.033 | 0.044 | 0.009 |
0.045 | 0.055 | 0.075 | 0.039 | 0.056 | 0.112 | -0.002 |
0.034 | 0.053 |
(0.026) | (0.004) | (0.005) | (0.005) | (0.003) | (0.005) | (0.010) | (0.004) | (0.010) | (0.010) | (0.007) | (0.004) | (0.012) | |
X3 (log) avg authors quality | 0.179 | 0.235 | 0.177 | 0.282 | 0.157 | 0.225 | 0.220 | 0.242 | 0.212 | 0.299 | 0.233 | 0.259 | 0.243 |
(0.008) | (0.002) | (0.003) | (0.003) | (0.002) | (0.003) | (0.005) | (0.002) | (0.004) | (0.005) | (0.004) | (0.002) | (0.007) | |
X4 Women | 0.024 |
-0.034 | -0.016 | -0.023 | -0.017 | -0.053 | -0.013 |
-0.028 | 0.011 |
-0.044 | -0.007 |
-0.023 | -0.011 |
(0.017) | (0.003) | (0.004) | (0.003) | (0.003) | (0.004) | (0.008) | (0.003) | (0.008) | (0.008) | (0.006) | (0.003) | (0.011) | |
X5 English | 0.020 |
-0.023 | -0.019 | -0.044 | -0.005 |
-0.054 | -0.038 | -0.033 | 0.017 |
-0.052 | -0.002 |
-0.014 | -0.008 |
(0.017) | (0.003) | (0.004) | (0.004) | (0.003) | (0.005) | (0.009) | (0.003) | (0.008) | (0.008) | (0.006) | (0.004) | (0.010) | |
X6 open access | 0.164 | 0.070 | 0.101 | 0.020 | 0.114 | 0.068 | 0.087 | 0.037 | 0.139 | 0.038 | 0.087 | 0.033 | 0.079 |
(0.018) | (0.004) | (0.006) | (0.004) | (0.004) | (0.006) | (0.009) | (0.004) | (0.008) | (0.010) | (0.018) | (0.004) | (0.010) | |
X7 (log) n. pages | 0.230 | 0.169 | 0.230 | 0.217 | 0.270 | 0.205 | 0.134 | 0.193 | 0.218 | 0.090 | 0.086 | 0.221 | 0.187 |
(0.026) | (0.005) | (0.007) | (0.006) | (0.005) | (0.008) | (0.015) | (0.005) | (0.013) | (0.010) | (0.011) | (0.005) | (0.018) | |
X8 (log) n. references | 0.269 | 0.277 | 0.239 | 0.249 | 0.243 | 0.267 | 0.313 | 0.268 | 0.275 | 0.316 | 0.287 | 0.262 | 0.291 |
(0.017) | (0.004) | (0.005) | (0.004) | (0.003) | (0.006) | (0.010) | (0.003) | (0.008) | (0.008) | (0.008) | (0.004) | (0.012) | |
X9 % references in WoS | 0.007 | 0.002 | 0.001 | 0.000 |
0.002 | 0.002 | 0.002 | 0.002 | 0.004 | 0.002 | -0.000 |
0.000 | 0.001 |
(0.001) | (0.000) | (0.000) | (0.000) | (0.000) | (0.000) | (0.000) | (0.000) | (0.000) | (0.000) | (0.000) | (0.000) | (0.000) | |
X10 (log) cited articles age | -0.193 | -0.408 | -0.383 | -0.456 | -0.319 | -0.414 | -0.490 | -0.386 | -0.322 | -0.357 | -0.429 | -0.395 | -0.463 |
(0.013) | (0.004) | (0.005) | (0.004) | (0.004) | (0.006) | (0.011) | (0.003) | (0.008) | (0.009) | (0.008) | (0.004) | (0.015) | |
X11 (log) cited articles impact | 0.093 | 0.043 | 0.070 | 0.029 | 0.075 | 0.090 | 0.127 | 0.076 | 0.096 | 0.103 | 0.051 | 0.045 | 0.093 |
(0.008) | (0.001) | (0.002) | (0.001) | (0.001) | (0.003) | (0.005) | (0.001) | (0.004) | (0.004) | (0.003) | (0.002) | (0.005) | |
Intercept | -2.312 | -1.264 | -1.377 | -0.952 | -1.676 | -1.409 | -1.308 | -1.326 | -1.821 | -1.303 | -1.160 | -1.269 | -1.266 |
(0.071) | (0.017) | (0.021) | (0.021) | (0.015) | (0.025) | (0.047) | (0.015) | (0.036) | (0.037) | (0.038) | (0.018) | (0.056) | |
Number of articles | 17,816 | 251,921 | 164,805 | 194,405 | 316,828 | 116,736 | 40,308 | 349,058 | 65,344 | 57,718 | 66,985 | 227,595 | 30,896 |
Number of journals | 1,618 | 2,187 | 1,187 | 600 | 2,954 | 931 | 919 | 2,104 | 1,800 | 746 | 202 | 864 | 525 |
R-squared | 0.26 | 0.27 | 0.26 | 0.31 | 0.24 | 0.27 | 0.28 | 0.28 | 0.22 | 0.26 | 0.24 | 0.30 | 0.22 |
Intra-journal correlation | 0.32 | 0.27 | 0.29 | 0.34 | 0.28 | 0.24 | 0.26 | 0.28 | 0.25 | 0.18 | 0.39 | 0.26 | 0.26 |