On the relationship between citations and appearances on “top 25” download lists in the International Journal of Accounting Information Systems

Citations from existing sources like the Social Science Citation Index (SSCI) have long been used to evaluate impact and importance of research. However, in addition to SSCI becoming digital, additional citation sources have been developed, such as SCOPUS and Google Scholar. Further, information now is available regarding papers that are among the most frequently downloaded, providing a new potential measure of impact and importance. This paper analyzes the use of digital and web citations, and newly available digital download information in the form of “top 25” most downloaded paper lists for the International Journal of Accounting Information Systems.This paper finds that any of the number of three types of “downloads” (abstract, paper and denied accesses) are highly correlated with each other. Further, in an analysis of the International Journal of Accounting Information Systems papers in “top 25” downloads, this paper finds that the number of citations and the number of times that a paper is in a “top 25” of downloaded papers are statistically significantly correlated. Finally, this paper finds that the set of “top 25” downloaded papers has a disproportionate number of citations.