Weak evidence for determinants of citation frequency in ecological articles

Citation frequency has been considered a biased surrogate of publication merit. However, previous studies on this subject were based on small sample sizes and were entirely based on null-hypothesis significance testing. Here we evaluated the relative effects of different predictors on citation frequency of ecological articles using an information theory framework designed to evaluate multiple competing hypotheses. Supposed predictors of citation frequency (e.g., number of authors, length of articles) accounted for a low fraction of the total variation. We argue that biases concerning citation are minor in ecology and further studies that attempt to quantify the scientific relevance of an article, aiming to make further relationships with citation, are needed to advance our understanding of why an article is cited.