Citation Counts and More Citation Counts: Useful? Interesting? or Counterproductive?

Abstract

In their focal article, Aguinis et al. (2017) categorized the 6,654 unique citations, summed across the six introductory industrial and organizational (I-O) psychology texts, in various ways. They then suggested how such data could be used to (a) infer the “state” of the scientist–practitioner divide; (b) document the extent of the movement of I-O psychologists to management schools; (c) evaluate the future prospects of I-O psychology as a field; and (d) provide guidance in how to define, measure, and reward “scholarly impact” (quotation marks added). This crosses the line from interesting toverycounterproductive.