Will you cite me? The emerging strategy of academic publishing
Résumé
This article introduces the research studies of 11, mostly young, European academics. Then it poses the question, will the work of these excellent young researchers be cited? In speculating about the future of their work, the wider question of using citation frequency to evaluate the performance of business school professors is discussed. Empirical data of published articles between 1990 and 2007 in the top five general management journals is analysed. The results of this examination suggest that (1) a dissemination bottleneck is being formed that slows down the exchange of research findings in a timely manner, (2) most articles published in the top five journals are not highly cited (median = 24, mean = 74, mode = 1), and (3) articles may need at least ten years after publication before reaching their maximum citation frequency.