Citation Analysis

Researchers’ thorough familiarity with the related literature together with the appropriate implementation of previous studies in academic publications is of crucial importance. Simply put, scientific studies need to address the related literature in a proper manner to get published. The main objective of the current study was to delineate citation patterns in applied linguistics. To come up with a citation framework/typology for applied linguistics, the researchers employed constructivist Grounded Theory. In order to present a comprehensive picture of citation practices, the researchers decided to investigate a corpus of five international and two local journals published between 2015 and 2020. Initial results revealed 20 themes which were then further categorized into five major themes. The results revealed considerable discrepancies between the local and international studies in employing various citation forms which can be attributed to journal polices, target audience and researchers’ expertise level. Furthermore, differences were detected in quantitative and qualitative studies in using various citation techniques which can be associated with the nature of such studies.

Conflict of Interest is a familiar phenomenon among Public Administration experts yet research wise, it has not received much attention. While government officials are accused of corruption and having Conflicts of Interest more than any other individual, research shows that only 1% of Conflict-of-Interest studies has been devoted to investigating the subject in the field of Public Administration. A Conflict of Interest occurs when an official is forced to choose between carrying out his/her administrative duties or following his/her personal interests. These interests include an individual’s financial or non-financial interests as well as the financial and non-financial interests of his/her relatives or friends. The research method of this article is based on citation analysis and drawing a citation network. The findings show that Sah, Moore, Loewenstein, and Cain are key experts in the field. The study of Cain et al (2005) is the key one that has the most relevance to other studies in this field and the study of Miller (2001) is also central which has been cited a lot. American Journal of Bioethics, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, and Journal of Personality and Social Psychology are esteemed scientific journals that have been most benefited from publications, communications, and citations, respectively. Ethics is the concept that has been co-occurrence with the conflict of interest. This means that a conflict of interest is inherently a normative and behavioral concept. Finally, it should be noted that given the results of this research, the concept of Conflict of Interest will remain a foundation for corruption in governments and public organizations if Public Administration experts and scholars remain as inattentive to the issue as before. Research into Conflict of Interest has been mainly focused on normative and behavioral approaches which means that there is a need for new researchers taking new approaches to break out of this cycle.

Retracted publications continue to influence scholarship long after withdrawal. This study assembles a curated set of 169 Iran-affiliated retractions in computer science, data science, and electrical engineering from 2008 to 2024, links them to citing and cited works through two complementary retrieval pipelines, and constructs an expanded citation network of 1'694 nodes and 1,703 edges. We quantify retraction reasons and timing, community structure, node centrality, self-citation patterns, author and institutional concentration, international co-authorship, and a field-adjusted national benchmark. Misconduct-related causes predominate. The average interval from publication to retraction increased into 2021 and has since begun to shorten. The citation network exhibits strong community structure with three major thematic clusters. Centrality profiling isolates five retracted works that function as hubs, often reinforced by self-citation loops. Contribution is highly concentrated among a small set of authors and institutions, while collaboration extends across multiple regions beyond Iran. A field-adjusted retraction rate places the national record among mid-tier producers. These results identify practical leverage points to reduce downstream spread of invalidated findings: persistent indexing flags on hub retractions, routine screening of citations to retracted work, and focused attention on repeat patterns in self-citation and institutional clusters. The study offers a reproducible dual-pipeline approach, a full centrality profile of an enlarged network, and actor-level diagnostics that support targeted integrity interventions.