Citing time lag: A new determinant for paper quality? A case study on management journal in China

It is an important part of citation analysis on whether the references are new or old in journal articles, whereas we currently only know Price Index and its variants, lacking of the related knowledge. In this study, therefore, we define the difference in the publication time between citing paper and cited papers as citing time lag, and thus make an exploratory case study concerning the journal Science Research Management (2003-2012), which explores the distribution law of citing time lag and demonstrates its impact on paper quality. Findings show that: (1) citing time lag presents a right-skewed distribution, with skewness of 0.86 and kurtosis of 1.06 and its accumulative function f=exp[7.625-6.166/t], and it is around the seventh year that citing time lag greatly affects paper quality in the case of our study; (2) statistical results indicate that citing time lag has a negative correlation with paper quality, that is, lower citing time lag leads to a higher paper quality. Specifically, 2.9% decreases in paper quality (denoted by citation count) for 1% increase in citing time lag with other conditions constant.