Insularity and citation behavior of scientific articles in young fields: the case of ethnobiology

We investigated some factors that can affect the citation behavior in young scientific fields by using ethnobiology as a research model. In particular, we sought to assess the degree of insularity in the citations of scientific articles and whether this behavior varies across countries, continents and related areas of knowledge. In addition, we analyzed if researchers cite more scientific articles or gray literature in their publications and whether there is variation in this behavior among different continents and areas of knowledge. We also assessed citation behavior considering open and closed access journals. Scientific articles from four journals that relate to ethnobiology were selected; two are open access journals, and two are closed access journals. Overall, we found a general lack of insularity, but the analysis by country revealed the existence of this phenomenon in Brazil, the United States, India, Mexico, Spain and Turkey. Contrary to what the scientometric literature indicates, the scientific articles that were published in closed access journals are cited more often than the scientific articles that were published in open access journals. This citation behavior may relate to the better establishment of this type of journal in the ethnobiology field, which also had articles with a lower citation rate of gray literature.