The indirect triangular citation mechanism among three publications represents a form of reference copying behavior in scholarly relationships. As a significant type of irregular citation, it disrupts the ecological balance of scientific citation norms. This study aims to explore the characteristics and internal mechanisms of indirect triangular citation based on literature source information, which constitutes a gap and a key problem in the field of scientometrics.
Firstly, this paper innovatively proposes a set of citation content analysis framework from the perspective of multiple citation structure, including citation relative position indicator, citation function classification system and so on. Secondly, the full-text data of large-scale triangular citation relations are used as experimental samples and the citation intensity, citation position, citation sentiment polarity and citation function of 18,817 triangular citation relationships are extracted, labelled and calculated. Finally, the study reveals the intrinsic citation rules of an “indirect triangular mechanism”.
A large number of indirect citations of the following literature C through intermediary literature B led to an inflated citation frequency of the original literature A, thus, creating a Matthew effect problem.
This study explores the characteristics of the citation content of the triangular citation structure and its indirect citation mechanism, which can provide theoretical support for the governance of irregular citation behaviour and the weakening of Matthew effect (existing highly cited literature tend to receive more citations, whereas new research of comparable quality may be overlooked) in citation evaluation.
