Author-related factors predicting citation counts of conference papers: focusing on computer and information science

Abstract

Purpose This paper aims to assess the predictive power of authorship properties determined at the time of publishing conference papers on future citations of conference papers in computer and information science. Design/methodology/approach This study examined 21 factors – related to all authors and to the first author – as potentially predictive of citation counts. Specifically, the study assessed properties of author's academic performance, degree of collaboration and topological properties of their research collaboration networks. Findings The results of comparing all authors with first authors indicate that the all author-related factors have a significantly higher power for explaining conference paper citation counts than the first author-related factors. Moreover, among the all author-related factors, the degree centrality before the target paper made the largest contribution. Originality/value This is one of the first attempts to focus on the relationship of author characteristics to conference papers. This is also one of only a few studies to expand prior research, which limited its bibliometric foci to journal articles, to conference papers.