Determinants of research citation impact in nanoscience and nanotechnology

This study investigates a range of metrics available when a nanoscience and nanotechnology article is published to see which metrics more correlate with the number of citations to the article. It also introduces the degree of internationality of journals and references as new metrics for this purpose. The journal impact factor, the impact of references, the internationality of authors, journals and references and the number of authors, institutions and references were all calculated for papers published in nanoscience and nanotechnology journals in the Web of Science from 2007 to 2009. Using a zero-inflated negative binomial regression model on the data set, the impact factor of the publishing journal and the citation impact of the cited references were found to be the most effective determinants of citation counts in all four time periods. In the entire 2007-2009 period, apart from journal internationality and author numbers and internationality, all other predictor variables had significant effects on citation counts.