Structural elements of articles and diachronous citation analysis among top-ranking tourism journals (1990–2010)

• We analyzed factors influencing citations received by tourism research articles.
• Three structural elements positively predicted citations articles received.
• One place-related factor negatively influenced citations articles received.
• The citation frequency in ATR, JTR and TM differed across SSCI and Scopus.

This paper analyses the influence of structural elements of articles (i.e., field-, journal-, article-, and author/reader related factors) along with place-related factors (i.e., destination, attraction, hotel/resort, or festival/special event/mega event) on citations received by research papers in the three top-tier tourism journals: Annals of Tourism Research, Journal of Travel Research, and Tourism Management from 1990 to 2010. Multiple linear regression tests showed that number of years since an article was published, length of an article, and frequency of journal publication were significant in predicting the frequencies of articles cited in SSCI and/or Scopus. The order of articles within an issue was also a significant predictor in Scopus. In addition, the citation frequency in the three journals differed with each other across SSCI and Scopus. Lastly, mentioning of place in the title of an article had a significant relationship, although it was negative, with the frequency of citations the article received in SSCI and Scopus.