Phenomenon and manifestation of the `Author's Effect of Showcasing' (AES): a literature science study, I. Emergence, causes and traces of the phenomenon in the literature, perception and notion of the effect

Abstract

The `Author's Effect of Showcasing' (AES) is the activity of publishing authors who shape by free will the formal reference stock of their communications cited directly and item by item, placing this formal reference stock into the showcase of science — consciously or unconsciously. This first paper of the study demonstrates the emergence, causes and traces of the AES phenomenon in the journal literature of the natural sciences already in the mature Little Science age, and the continuous existence of the phenomenon ever since. The perception and cognition of the effect is shown on the basis of the relevant findings of the present author's previous, manual fact-finding reference investigations based on autopsy, processing around 27,600 journal communications and reference stocks containing more than 322,000 citations. Finally, a summarizing definition of the notion of the effect is given. In a second paper, the manifestation of the AES phenomenon will be demonstrated and analysed in the theoretically most homogeneous domain of the scientific literature.