The relationship between highly-cited papers and the frequency of citations to other papers within-issue among three top information science journals

This study investigates a potential relationship between highly-cited scholarly papers and the number of citations received by other papers with which they share a journal issue. Citations received by 3675 articles across 484 issues published in three top information science journals are analyzed based on the condition of whether an article was published in an issue that includes a “highly-cited” paper (two standard deviations above mean number by year). The findings indicate a statistically significant effect of highly-cited papers and citations to other papers in the same journal issue. This finding is relevant to authors and publishers when considering the structure of publications with an “issue” format.