AUTHOR JUDGMENTS ABOUT WORKS THEY CITE - 3 STUDIES FROM PSYCHOLOGY JOURNALS

Many researchers use citation counts to study science. But few studies explore the meanings of those citations. Oddly enough, least explored of all are judgements by the authors who cite them. This paper descri bes three empirical studies of citations in psychology journals that e xplored these judgements. in general, highly cited scholarly works are rated as exemplars and as being of higher quality, although there wer e differences between older and newer works in these ratings. More int erestingly, works rated as highly creative had mixed fates. Creative w orks were judged to be higher quality exemplars; but creative works al so had the lowest citation counts once quality and exemplar ratings we re taken into account. It may be that some creative works fit poorly i nto existing conceptual or methodological structures, and so are used less.