Non-citable but not Uncited: A Large-Scale Citation Analysis of Editorials

It is widely recognized that the Journal Impact Factor (JIF) can be subject to manipulation, and one such strategy is to publish more editorials. Editorials are considered non-citable and thus excluded from the JIF denominator despite being cited and contributing substantially to the numerator. The strategy is successful if the editorials are cited. Thus, increasing the scientific content of the editorials may result in higher citation counts. This study analyzes the number of editorials published across fields and citations to these to examine if editorials with more scientific content are more cited than editorials with less scientific content. The results show that there is no indication of a general increase over time in editorials with longer reference lists, even though editorials with longer reference lists are found to be cited more.