Article

The Most Frequently Cited Topics in Urban

Planning Scholarship
Thomas W. Sanchez
Urban Affairs and Planning, Virginia Tech, Arlington, VA 22203, USA; tom.sanchez@vt.edu; Tel.: +1-540-231-5485




Received: 14 December 2019; Accepted: 15 January 2020; Published: 17 January 2020


Abstract: Analyses of faculty citation activity usually focus on counts as a function of author
characteristics, such as rank, gender, previous citation levels, and other factors influencing productivity
and career path. Citation analyses of publications consider aspects, such as the number of authors,
author reputation, author order, length of the title, methodology, and impact factors of the publication.
While publication topics or discipline is considered important factors, they are more difficult to
analyze, and therefore, performed less frequently. This article attempts to do that for the field of
urban planning. Urban planning is multi-disciplinary and includes consideration of social, economic,
technological, environmental, and political systems that shape human settlement patterns. It has been
suspected that some topics are more “popular” and have larger audiences, therefore, are cited more
often. Using nearly 15,000 urban planning publications, this article presents an analysis of topics
to assess which are cited most frequently. The classification of publications was performed using a
Support Vector Machine (SVM), a machine learning (ML) approach to text classification, using citation
data from Google Scholar. The citation levels for the resulting categories are analyzed and discussed.

Keywords: urban planning; bibliometrics; citation analysis

1. Introduction
Urban planning is an interdisciplinary field, focused on understanding human settlement
patterns [1]. Planning is a specialized and relatively small discipline that draws on design (e.g.,
architecture), policy (e.g., public administration), and social science (e.g., geography). Like other social
sciences, urban planning scholars disseminate their research in a wide array of academic journals.
For just over 1100 urban planning faculty in the USA and Canada, there are over 300 journals where
their publications appear. It is difficult to say whether this is a significantly large number of outlets
without similar metrics from other disciplines. However, the objective of this article is to examine which
research topics are of interest to current urban planning faculty in North America, and not a comparison
to other disciplines. The purpose is to identify prominent topics so that planning academics can reflect
on whether these are the issues that should be receiving our attention. The analysis concentrates on
faculty in urban planning programs and their publication activities, and not what is being published
about urban planning topics in general. This provides the opportunity for planning to consider its
scholarly priorities as we look to the future of urban planning and urban science research.
With urban planning interests representing several disciplines, we suspect that there is a shifting
hierarchy of topics over time. These include, but are not limited to, changing perspectives on
infrastructure policy, architecture, social conditions, environmental conditions, economic activity, and
governance—all of these representing significant aspects of urban systems. Not all of these are given
equal attention over time, as particular concerns or interests are more visible at certain times compared
to others. From the public’s perspective, these interests are being driven by changing policies or
politics, and by the flow of information from sources, such as the news media. From an academic and
institutional standpoint, themes of research are certainly influenced by the availability of funding and

Urban Sci. 2020, 4, 4; doi:10.3390/urbansci4010004 www.mdpi.com/journal/urbansci

Urban Sci. 2020, 4, 4 2 of 11

the priorities of funding organizations [2,3]. While there are no comprehensive data sources about
funded research activities related to urban planning, it would be interesting to know how or whether
these topics differ from those of scholarly output. This remains a topic for future research.
Within urban planning, there is also the question of how academic research represents the needs
of the practicing professionals [4,5]. Planning professionals are confronted with new and different
types of urban questions, as well as seeking solutions to on-going questions. Loh [6] argues that
“planning is very much an action-oriented field” and therefore, research “not closely focused on what
planners actually do is of limited relevance to the profession” (p. 25). Urban planning scholars have
long contributed knowledge to the planning profession through their teaching, research, and service
activities, while at the same time meeting traditional academic expectations through scholarship [7].
Planning students seek professionally-oriented training, and academic planning programs are expected
to connect directly with local communities through their service and outreach activities [8,9]. However,
the question remains whether planning academics are more responsive to topics when funding
is available, when research is needed by the profession, or when the topic is of academic interest.
Some have argued that placing scholarship as a priority over teaching and service in planning programs
is a result of institutional pressures for faculty having doctorates rather than professional certification.
As Krumholz noted, the emphasis on “a productive history of publication in refereed journals,”
contributes to a divide between planning research and practice [10].

Citation Analyses
Citation analysis has an extensive literature documenting citation practices across disciplines, as
well as meticulous discussion of measurement and evaluation [11–14]. Citation analysis is a way to
evaluate scholarship to gauge prominence and productivity, but often excluding other dimensions,
such as visibility and impact [15]. Citation analysis is also benefitting sophisticated text analytics
techniques that move beyond extracting and counting citation to determining context and intent for
citations [14]. The following provides a brief discussion and background on citation data, citation
analysis, and urban planning scholarship.
This analysis uses citation metadata and counts from Google Scholar (GS). Many researchers have
examined GS for citation analyses by making comparisons to the other prominent sources of citation
data (such as Scopus and Web of Science (WoS)). One concern that has arisen is about GS’s coverage
of scholarly publications relative to that of Scopus or WoS [16–19]. However, these issues are likely
discipline-specific, with many examples highlighting GS’s reliability for topics ranging from oncology
and condensed matter physics [20], business and economics [21], health and medical research [22].
Meta-analyses are useful for illustrating patterns in bibliometric performance by examining different
data sources and analytical methods [23,24]. Many of the analyses comparing GS with Scopus and
WoS concentrate on the difference in the number of citations rather than the accuracy of these data at
the for individual authors. However, to assess the accuracy of citation counts for an author, a verified
list of publications, such as from a current CV (Curriculum Vitae) would have to be compared to those
listed in citation databases. This is not presently feasible because there are no centralized sources of
confirmed CV data or publication records that can be matched to those in citation databases.
GS includes “non-traditional” publications unlike Scopus and WoS [25,26]. The presence of
non-peer-reviewed publications in GS is a relevant question, when considering scholarly citation
counts. The inclusion of gray literature, for instance, has been argued to have a greater reach and impact
compared to pay-wall-protected publication and citation data from major publishers. Professionally
oriented disciplines like urban planning produce gray literature that is research-based and reflects
the scholarly process of particular value to allied professions, and therefore, reflects academic rigor
and impact [27–29]. Finally, Pauly and Stergiou [30] stated that “free access to these data provided by
Google Scholar offers an avenue for more transparency in tenure reviews, funding and other science
policy issues, as it allows citation counts, and analyses based thereon, to be performed and duplicated
Urban Sci. 2020, 4, 4 3 of 11

by anyone” (p. 2). This is a strong case for GS as a source of citation analysis and the fact that it
includes gray literature is particularly pertinent to planning academics.
As mentioned earlier, urban planning draws upon a diverse range of disciplines and expertise.
These form urban planning subfields that are reflected in the types of publication topics, as well
as the breadth of journals where these publications appear. Of the few journal articles about urban
planning citation activity beginning with Stiftel, Rukmana, and Alam [31] (followed several years
later by Sanchez [32], Pojani et al. [33] and Stevens et al. [34]), only Stevens et al. have explicitly tried
to measure topical differences within urban planning citation patterns. In their analysis of factors
affecting urban planning citations, they examined whether the publication topics were related to
thirteen selected topics. They found that compared to “transportation”, nearly all of the other 12 were
cited less frequently. Compared to the current analysis, Stevens et al. had a sample of 580 compared to
nearly 15,000 in this analysis. In addition, Stevens et al. used manual, single-label topic classification
versus multi-label in this analysis. The sample size issue could introduce bias by underrepresenting
certain planning topics.
The bibliometric literature has recognized the differential rates of citation by topics, following the
assumption that certain sub-fields are more popular, have more publications, and therefore, greater
chances of citation [35]. One methodological issue is how to classify or categorize publications so that
citation rates can be accurately compared. This includes an approach to normalize citation counts
based on some of these factors [36]. These methods include topic analysis [37], author-provided
keywords [38], thematic analysis [39], or based on categorization defined at submission by authors or
journal editors. Topics and keywords restricted by journals can have a limiting effect on topic or theme
classification through unintentional exclusion. An alternative would be to analyze abstracts for these
purposes, but it greatly increases the data collection and analysis task for the uncertain benefit to the
classification process. In addition, titles are consistently available across publication types (i.e., journal
articles, books, or reports) where abstracts and keywords are not. Therefore, titles provide a rich data
source for the current analysis.
The title of a publication is considered to be important for not only indicating content, but also for
attracting attention [40,41]. While the author provided keywords are frequently used for discovery,
titles themselves can distill several dimensions of a publication, including subject, method, geographic
context, and results [42]. Because distinct keywords may not convey an overall theme, such as what
can be represented in the sentence form of a title. This has to do with the linguistic structure of a
title not intended by keywords [43]. However, Levy and Ellis [44] suggest that the author provided
keywords may be buzz-word laden, and perhaps unreliable in the long-term. In addition, besides the
information retrieval aspects of titles, bibliometricians have examined how title characteristics correlate
with citation rates [45–47]. Such analyses include title length, punctuation, structure, use of acronyms,
and descriptiveness. However, in cases where title attributes are correlated with higher citation rates,
it has not been suggested that this somehow indicates a higher level of publication quality.

2. Methodology
This analysis first collects publication records from current planning academics with Google
Scholar Citation Profiles. At the time of this analysis, 598 out of 1109 planning faculty in USA and
Canada had GS profiles (54%), and their publications accounted for over 75% of total citations (as of
June 2019) by planning faculty. The next step identified topics based on word and term frequencies
from publication titles. This was conducted using thematic analysis within NVivo (QSR International,
Melbourne, Australia). The process involves text analysis to build nodes of related words and terms
to identify themes [48] for background on the thematic analysis). During the first step, NVivo
automatically identified 102 nodes, which were then manually reviewed and recombined to obtain
the resulting 30 themes. This is challenging in some cases for terms like “analysis” which can appear
on its own as a topic about methodologies, but often attached to a particular subject of analysis,
such as “transportation analysis”, “economic analysis”, “environmental analysis”, etc. Because the
Urban Sci. 2020, 4, 4 4 of 11

classification of publication titles uses multiple labels, these associations are expected to emerge from
SVM labelling. The result of this analysis was the 30 key topics shown in Table 1. All of the publication
titles from faculty GS profiles were then coded using the topics (labels) with a Support Vector Machine
(SVM).

Table 1. Nodes from thematic analysis (in alphabetical order).

Topics
Analysis Governance Policy
Change Hazards Public
Cities Health Regional
Community Housing Social
Design Impacts Spatial
Development Land Use Sustainable
Economic Local Systems
Engagement Management Technology
Environmental Neighborhood Transportation
Global Planning Urban

Themes can be identified through the classification of full text, abstracts, or titles. Full text,
abstracts, and titles obviously contain different levels of detail given the amounts of data (total words)
associated with each. In this case, the purpose was to identify fairly high-level groupings of topics,
so titles were used for this because they are intended to be a distillation of publication content as
previously discussed. This parallels the work of Sanchez and Afzalan [49] who used self-reported areas
of research interest from urban planning faculty (see Table 2 for the list of top 30 research interests).
Comparing Table 1; Table 2 suggests that in the case of urban planning publications, titles are useful
sources of this information, with significant similarity in topic identifiers between stated research
interests and publication titles. There were 21 of 30 faculty research interests that matched the topics
from the thematic analysis, while others were very closely related, such as “studies” and “analysis”;
“spatial” and “GIS”; “participation” and “engagement”; and “growth” and “change”. The comparison
of these two lists helped to confirm the appropriateness of the labels derived from the thematic analysis.

Table 2. Top 30 urban planning faculty research interests from Sanchez and Afzalan (2017)
(in alphabetical order).

Labels
Analysis Growth Planning
Change Health Policy
City History Public
Community Housing Regional
Design International Social
Development Land-use Studies
Economic Management Sustainable
Environmental Methods Theory
Finance Neighborhood Transportation
GIS Participation Urban

Support Vector Machine

Machine learning (ML), natural language processing (NLP), and text classification are being
applied to a wide variety of unstructured data. These include sentiment analysis of customer comments,
recommendation systems, and web page classification. Text analysis is used to find word usage
patterns that help to identify themes or clusters, especially from very large data sets. Data sets can be
manually labelled, which can become infeasible when the volume of words (data) or records reaches
the thousands, millions, or billions. In addition, automating this process with machine learning can
Urban Sci. 2020, 4, 4 5 of 11

also ensure that labels are assigned in a consistent manner [50]. This analysis used the support vector
machine (SVM) approach to classify all publication titles using the labels shown in Table 1.
A SVM is a machine learning algorithm used for object classification. The process maps observations
in high-dimensional space which are then partitioned by “support vectors” that optimize how associated
points are distinguished from others. The process typically involves training the algorithm by using
previously classified records so the algorithm can “learn” the differences among classes (i.e., groups) [51].
Training usually occurs during manual classification or a “supervised” stage, and once trained, the
algorithm can classify other observations automatically, during an “unsupervised” stage. The algorithm
can also be improved as items are validated [52,53]. This analysis used the SVM platform, MonkeyLearn,
to classify the text (titles) using the 30 labels shown in Table 1. This involved supervised training of the
model with at least 50 observations for each label. The training process involved manual inspection of
labelled features to ensure accuracy and increase the confidence of the model. The SVM model creates
an algorithm that is then applied consistently across the remaining (unlabeled) features. A sample of
100 labelled titles was randomly selected and manually tested for accuracy. Of the 100 titles, 92% of the
labels were assessed as being correct. Overall, there were 272 labels applied to this sample, averaging
2.7 labels per title.
After all publication titles were classified, citation frequencies for the labelled themes were
analyzed. The groups of publications were compared in terms of: (1) Total publications; (2) total
citations; and (3) the average citations per publication per year. The total citations for each topic were
normalized by the total number of publications and the age of the publication in years. This is important
because topics with more publications will likely have the most citations, and older publications had
more time to accumulate citations.
The process classified publication titles based on multiple labels (e.g., “transportation” and
“housing”), instead of single labels for the more effective topic specification. This accounts for the
nature of planning publication topics and title structure that often reflect the subject, method, and results
of a publication. This differs from the single-label approach used by Stevens et al. (2019) as mentioned
earlier. For instance, a publication about transportation systems that consider land-use activities is
not just about transportation or just about land-use. In a case like this, a multi-label, SVM assigns the
two labels, “transportation” and “land-use”. Figure 1 shows the distribution of 30 topic labels. Each
row shows the proportion of co-labeled topics with the size of the dot showing the relative frequency
for each dyad. The first row shows that “analysis” was co-labeled with most of the other themes
with similar frequencies, with the exceptions of “governance” and “engagement.” “Economic” and
“environment” had similar patterns and were frequently co-labeled with most of the other topics.
Each row is interpreted as the overall number of times the corresponding row label has appeared
with the column labels in any combination. Other noteworthy cases are “housing” and “land use”,
“planning” and “engagement”, “policy” and “governance”, “policy” and “local”, and “social” and
“health”. These dyads make sense and represent population planning research topics.
Urban Sci.Sci.
Urban 2020, 4, 44, x FOR PEER REVIEW
2020, 6 of6 11
of 11

Figure 1. Co-labelling distribution across publication themes.

3. Results
Figure 1. Co-labelling distribution across publication themes.
Using 14,757 publications titles retrieved from 598 Google Scholar Citation profiles, the method
3. Results
generated 3674 topics or themes. While this may sound like a large number of topics, the 30 classifiers
resulting from14,757
Using the thematic analysis
publications titles means that
retrieved there
from 598were
Googleover 1 billion
Scholar possible
Citation combinations
profiles, the method of
these 30 topics (2 30 = 1,073,741,824). These themes resulted from the assignment of multiple labels
generated 3674 topics or themes. While this may sound like a large number of topics, the 30 classifiers
using the SVM
resulting approach
from the thematicdescribed earlier.
analysis meansThe topthere
that 20%were
of publications
over 1 billion(bypossible
citationcombinations
totals) represents
of
nearly 80% (79.8%) of total citations in the sample. Sanchez [32] found that the 80-20
these 30 topics (2 = 1,073,741,824). These themes resulted from the assignment of multiple labels
30 rule (also referred
to as Lotka’s
using Law)approach
the SVM applied described
in the caseearlier.
of faculty
The citations,
top 20% ofwhere the top(by
publications 20% of faculty
citation generated
totals) 80%
represents
of all citations.
nearly Table of
80% (79.8%) 3 shows the 20 themes
total citations havingSanchez
in the sample. the highest levelsthat
[32] found of citation
the 80-20activity.
rule (also referred
to as Lotka’s Law) applied in the case of faculty citations, where the top 20% of faculty generated 80%
of all citations. Table Table 3. Top
3 shows the 20
20 topics
themesbyhaving
mean cites per publication
the highest levels ofper year. activity.
citation
Total Mean Mean
Rank Table 3.Topic Number
Top 20 topics by mean cites per publication per year.
Cites Cites Cites/Year
1 Development Economic Global Regional 3 4874 Total1624.7 Mean 76.8 Mean
2
Rank Change Management Transportation
Topic 5 Number5539 1107.8 75.5
3 Policy Spatial Urban 4 3779 Cites 944.8 Cites 67.6 Cites/Year
1 4 Environmental
Development Social Systems
Economic Global Regional 4 3 2571 4874 642.8 1624.7 58.6 76.8
5 Analysis Urban Environmental Social Systems 3 1189 396.3 36.2
2 6 Change Management
Cities Urban Transportation
Environment 9 5 1526 5539 169.6 1107.8 29.7 75.5
3 7 Environmental Planning
Policy Spatial Urban Policy Analysis 6 4 1250 3779 208.3 944.8 29.0 67.6
8 Impact Analysis Urban Systems 3 1064 354.7 28.7
4 9 Environmental Social Systems
Sustainable Community Policy 3 4 891 2571 297.0 642.8 23.5 58.6
10 Urban Social Change 4 828 207.0 22.4
5 Analysis Urban Environmental Social Systems 3 1189 396.3 36.2
11 Urban Environmental Systems 4 580 145.0 22.1
6 12 Cities
LandUrban Environment Impacts
Use Transportation 11 9 3414 1526 310.4 169.6 20.6 29.7
13 Social Sustainability 3 408 136.0 19.5
7 Environmental Planning Policy Analysis 6 1250 208.3 29.0
14 Global Regional Economics 9 1969 218.8 19.5
Urban Sci. 2020, 4, 4 7 of 11

Table 3. Cont.

Total Mean Mean

Rank Topic Number
Cites Cites Cites/Year
15 Urban Environmental Land Use Impacts 3 589 196.3 19.3
16 Cities Environmental Change 4 659 164.8 18.4
17 Sustainable Development Planning Analysis 3 927 309.0 18.3
18 Design Impacts Analysis 3 755 251.7 17.4
19 Housing Land Use Environmental Planning 12 964 80.3 17.0
20 Social Design 11 762 69.3 16.7

The results show that key topics in planning publications include economics, analysis, environment,
transportation, regional, social, planning, and urban. These are the core elements underlying geographic
scale (urban and regional), urban systems (economic, environment, social, mobility), and methodology
(planning and analysis). Of the 30 identified topics, analysis, environment, economic, and transportation
were the most frequently cited with each having over 100,000 citations (see Table 4).

Table 4. Topic frequency (in single or multiple topics).

Topic Number Total Cites Mean Cites Mean Cites/Year

Global 795 51,382 64.6 5.3
Urban 1897 96,802 51.0 5.1
Spatial 688 34,816 50.6 5.0
Regional 972 59,964 61.7 4.7
Cities 1179 51,755 43.9 4.6
Governance 20 894 44.7 4.5
Neighborhood 280 11,969 42.8 4.3
Systems 697 28,893 41.5 4.3
Environmental 3739 161,408 43.2 4.1
Social 1935 77,942 40.3 4.0
Sustainable 474 17,932 37.8 4.0
Change 951 40,893 43.0 3.9
Transportation 2609 100,091 38.4 3.9
Health 20 498 24.9 3.6
Land Use 2465 91,732 37.2 3.5
Analysis 4787 171,487 35.8 3.5
Policy 1442 56,212 39.0 3.5
Impacts 1293 42,989 33.3 3.5
Management 823 35,366 43.0 3.4
Planning 1756 61,550 35.1 3.3
Housing 532 18,097 34.0 3.3
Economic 3650 145,779 39.9 3.3
Design 803 28,213 35.1 3.3
Development 1699 68,765 40.5 3.3
Local 402 14,618 36.4 3.1
Public 696 21,452 30.8 3.0
Community 757 26,347 34.8 2.9
Hazards 42 1776 42.3 2.9
Engagement 20 553 27.7 2.3
Technology 28 387 13.8 1.7

4. Discussion
A key finding of this analysis is that instead of particular topics having high rates of citation
activity, differences may be driven by particular, highly cited publications. Comparing the multi-label
results in Table 3 with the single-label results in Table 4, it appears that as classification becomes more
specific, particular highly cited publications influence the identification of a topic. The top 20 topics
only averaged 5.4 publications compared to nearly 1250 for the 30 themes identified. The citation rates
Urban Sci. 2020, 4, 4 8 of 11

also differ significantly. For instance, the leading topic, “Development Economic Global Regional”
averaged 76.8 citations per publication per year, and the top theme, “Global” averaged 5.3 citations per
publication per year. Examples from the top 5 in Table 3 (averaging over 30 citations per year) include
those shown in Table 5. Given the small number in each topic area, it is easy to see how the average
number of citations are influenced by particular publications.

Table 5. Examples of highly cited publications.

Theme Publication Cites Cites/Year

Development Economic Storper, M. (1997). The regional world: Territorial
4728 225.1
Global Regional development in a global economy. Guilford Press.
Feldman, M. S., & Pentland, B. T. (2003).
Reconceptualizing organizational routines as a
Change Management 2988 199.2
source of flexibility and change. Administrative
science quarterly, 48(1), 94–118.
Brenner, N. (2004). New State Spaces: Urban
Policy Spatial Urban Governance and the Rescaling of Statehood. Oxford 3674 262.4
University Press.

5. Conclusions
The purpose of this analysis was to illustrate differential citation levels across topics within urban
planning scholarship. The analysis presents a snapshot of scholarship, drawing from nearly 50 years of
publications, authored by current urban planning faculty in the USA and Canada, in order to highlight
topics receiving the most attention in a number of publication and citation activity. As demonstrated,
the approach to identifying topics can impact the types of topics being compared, especially related to
the level of specificity. It is possible that using more data (such as abstracts or full-text) could lead to
somewhat different and more fine-grained groupings of topics because using more words may end up
producing more labels or categories. Overall, the analysis showed which topics have generated the
most interest from planning academics and those of planning and related fields.
It would not surprise urban planning scholars that the highest level of publication activity occurs
on the topics related to analysis, environment, economy, transportation, and urban. This is because
these are areas with substantial audiences and publication opportunities, both within urban planning
and related fields, such as environmental studies, economics, civil engineering, and urban studies.
An objective of the article was to report citation activity, but this also points to a limitation of the
analysis. As mentioned earlier, citation levels are a function of several factors and not just based on
publication topic or content. Title structure, author prominence, journal status, and other characteristics
of visibility should be controlled for in future analyses of these data. The results reported here are not
normalized by the factors mentioned above. Nonetheless, the patterns of urban planning topics and
citation activity provide useful information not previously assembled at this level of specificity.
Future analyses using these types of data can take many forms. This analysis used a relatively
general level of topic analysis arriving at 30 single word topics. Subsequent analyses could be more
granular to be more specific about topics of scholarly activities. For instance, a topic like transportation
could instead be further divided into sub-topics, such as freight, passenger, impacts, service planning,
etc. However, as mentioned earlier, these topics may not be the best predictor of high citation activity,
but rather other characteristics of individual publications.

Funding: This research received no external funding.

Acknowledgments: I want to thank the three reviewers for their excellent comments. Thanks also to Lucas Mun
of Virginia Tech for his valuable programming assistance.
Conflicts of Interest: The author declares no conflict of interest.
Urban Sci. 2020, 4, 4 9 of 11

References
1. Hall, P.; Tewdwr-Jones, M. Urban and Regional Planning, 5th ed.; Routledge: London, UK, 2010.
2. Hicks, D.J.; Stahmer, C.; Smith, M. Impacting Capabilities: A Conceptual Framework for the Social Value of
Research. Front. Res. Metr. Anal. 2018, 3, 24. [CrossRef]
3. Shneiderman, B. The New ABCs of Research: Achieving Breakthrough Collaborations; Oxford University Press:
Oxford, UK, 2016.
4. Alexander, E.R. How Theory Links Research and Practice: 70 Years’ Planning Theory: A Critical Review.
In Planning Knowledge and Research; Routledge: London, UK, 2017; pp. 7–23.
5. Burton, P. Striving for Impact Beyond the Academy? Planning Research in Australia. In Planning Knowledge
and Research; Routledge: London, UK, 2017; pp. 51–65.
6. Loh, C.G. Learning from Practice, Learning for Practice in Local Land Use Planning Research. In Planning
Knowledge and Research; Routledge: London, UK, 2017; pp. 24–34.
7. Wachs, M. The case for practitioner faculty. J. Plan. Educ. Res. 1994, 13, 290–296. [CrossRef]
8. Spain, D. Creating and defending links between teaching, research, and public service. J. Plan. Educ. Res.
1992, 12, 77–79. [CrossRef]
9. Wiewel, W.; Carlson, V.; Friedman, S. Planning the new urban university: The role of planning departments.
J. Plan. Educ. Res. 1996, 16, 127–135. [CrossRef]
10. Krumholz, N. From planning practice to academia. J. Plan. Educ. Res. 1986, 6, 60–65. [CrossRef]
11. Garfield, E. Citation analysis as a tool in journal evaluation. Am. Assoc. Adv. Sci. 1972, 178, 471–479.
12. Garfield, E.; Merton, R.K. Citation Indexing: Its Theory and Application in Science, Technology, and Humanities;
Wiley: New York, NY, USA, 1979; Volume 8.
13. Moed, H.F. Citation Analysis in Research Evaluation; Springer: Berlin, Germany, 2006; Volume 9.
14. Tahamtan, I.; Bornmann, L. What Do Citation Counts Measure? An Updated Review of Studies on Citations
in Scientific Documents Published between 2006 and 2018. Scientometrics 2019, 121, 1635–1684. [CrossRef]
15. Sanchez, T.W. Academic Visibility and the Webometric Future. J. World Univ. Forum 2014, 6, 37–52. [CrossRef]
16. Meho, L.I.; Yang, K. Impact of data sources on citation counts and rankings of LIS faculty: Web of Science
versus Scopus and Google Scholar. J. Am. Soc. Inf. Sci. Technol. 2007, 58, 2105–2125. [CrossRef]
17. Falagas, M.E.; Pitsouni, E.I.; Malietzis, G.A.; Pappas, G. Comparison of PubMed, Scopus, web of science,
and Google scholar: Strengths and weaknesses. FASEB J. 2008, 22, 338–342. [CrossRef]
18. Li, J.; Burnham, J.F.; Lemley, T.; Britton, R.M. Citation Analysis: Comparison of Web of Science® , Scopus ™,
SciFinder® , and Google Scholar. J. Electron. Resour. Med. Libr. 2010, 7, 196–217. [CrossRef]
19. Harzing, A.W.; Van der Wal, R. Google Scholar: The democratization of citation analysis. Ethics Sci. Environ.
Politics 2007, 8, 61–73. [CrossRef]
20. Bakkalbasi, N.; Bauer, K.; Glover, J.; Wang, L. Three options for citation tracking: Google Scholar, Scopus and
Web of Science. Biomed. Digit. Libr. 2006, 3, 7. [CrossRef] [PubMed]
21. Levine-Clark, M.; Gil, E.L. A comparative citation analysis of Web of Science, Scopus, and Google Scholar.
J. Bus. Financ. Librariansh. 2008, 14, 32–46. [CrossRef]
22. Kulkarni, A.V.; Aziz, B.; Shams, I.; Busse, J.W. Comparisons of citations in Web of Science, Scopus, and
Google Scholar for articles published in general medical journals. JAMA 2009, 302, 1092–1096. [CrossRef]
[PubMed]
23. Schroeder, R. Pointing users toward citation searching: Using Google Scholar and Web of Science. Portal Libr.
Acad. 2007, 7, 243–248. [CrossRef]
24. Franceschet, M. A comparison of bibliometric indicators for computer science scholars and journals on Web
of Science and Google Scholar. Scientometrics 2010, 83, 243–258. [CrossRef]
25. Walters, W.H. Google Scholar coverage of a multidisciplinary field. Inf. Process. Manag. 2007, 43, 1121–1132.
[CrossRef]
26. Ortega, J.L.; Aguillo, I.F. Microsoft academic search and Google scholar citations: Comparative analysis of
author profiles. J. Assoc. Inf. Sci. Technol. 2014, 65, 1149–1156. [CrossRef]
27. Kousha, K.; Thelwall, M. Sources of Google Scholar citations outside the Science Citation Index: A comparison
between four science disciplines. Scientometrics 2007, 74, 273–294. [CrossRef]
28. Pomerantz, J. Google Scholar and 100% Availability of Information. Inf. Technol. Libr. 2013, 25, 52–56.
[CrossRef]
Urban Sci. 2020, 4, 4 10 of 11

29. Harzing, A.W. A longitudinal study of Google Scholar coverage between 2012 and 2013. Scientometrics 2013,
98, 565–575. [CrossRef]
30. Pauly, D.; Stergiou, K.I. Equivalence of results from two citation analyses: Thomson ISI’s Citation Index and
Google’s Scholar service. Ethics Sci. Environ. Politics 2005, 2005, 33–35. [CrossRef]
31. Stiftel, B.; Rukmana, D.; Alam, B. Faculty quality in US planning schools: An NRC-style study. J. Plan. Educ.
Res. 2004, 24, 6–22. [CrossRef]
32. Sanchez, T.W. Faculty Performance Evaluation Using Citation Analysis: An Update. J. Plan. Educ. Res. 2017,
37, 83–94. [CrossRef]
33. Pojani, D.; Olvera-Garcia, J.; Sipe, N.; Byrne, J. Research productivity of Australian planning academics:
A bibliometric analysis. J. Plan. Educ. Res. 2018. [CrossRef]
34. Stevens, M.R.; Park, K.; Tian, G.; Kim, K.; Ewing, R. Why Do Some Articles in Planning Journals Get Cited
More than Others? J. Plan. Educ. Res. 2019. [CrossRef]
35. Bornmann, L.; Schier, H.; Marx, W.; Daniel, H.D. What factors determine citation counts of publications in
chemistry besides their quality? J. Informetr. 2012, 6, 11–18. [CrossRef]
36. Bornmann, L.; Wohlrabe, K. Normalisation of citation impact in economics. Scientometrics 2019, 120, 841–884.
[CrossRef]
37. Mann, G.S.; Mimno, D.; McCallum, A. Bibliometric impact measures leveraging topic analysis. In Proceedings
of the 6th ACM/IEEE-CS Joint Conference on Digital Libraries ACM, Chapel Hill, NC, USA, 11–15 June 2006;
pp. 65–74.
38. Kim, H.E.; Jiang, X.; Kim, J.; Ohno-Machado, L. Trends in biomedical informatics: Most cited topics from
recent years. J. Am. Med. Inform. Assoc. 2011, 18, 166–170. [CrossRef]
39. Halverson, L.R.; Graham, C.R.; Spring, K.J.; Drysdale, J.S.; Henrie, C.R. A thematic analysis of the most
highly cited scholarship in the first decade of blended learning research. Internet High. Educ. 2014, 20, 20–34.
[CrossRef]
40. Merrill, E.; Knipps, A. What’s in a Title? J. Wildl. Manag. 2014, 78, 761–762. [CrossRef]
41. Paiva, C.E.; Lima, J.P.D.S.N.; Paiva, B.S.R. Articles with short titles describing the results are cited more often.
Clinics 2012, 67, 509–513. [CrossRef]
42. Goodman, R.A.; Thacker, S.B.; Siegel, P.Z. What’s in a title? A descriptive study of article titles in peer
reviewed medical journals. Science 2001, 24, 75–78.
43. Yan, Y.; Liao, Z.; Chen, X. Fixed-income securities: Bibliometric review with network analysis. Scientometrics
2018, 116, 1615–1640. [CrossRef]
44. Levy, Y.; Ellis, T.J. A systems approach to conduct an effective literature review in support of information
systems research. Inf. Sci. Int. J. Emerg. Transdiscipl. 2006, 9, 181–213. [CrossRef]
45. Jamali, H.R.; Nikzad, M. Article title type and its relation with the number of downloads and citations.
Scientometrics 2011, 88, 653–661. [CrossRef]
46. Subotic, S.; Mukherjee, B. Short and amusing: The relationship between title characteristics, downloads, and
citations in psychology articles. J. Inf. Sci. 2014, 40, 115–124. [CrossRef]
47. Jacques, T.S.; Sebire, N.J. The impact of article titles on citation hits: An analysis of general and specialist
medical journals. JRSM Short Rep. 2010, 1, 1–5. [CrossRef]
48. Welsh, E. Dealing with data: Using NVivo in the qualitative data analysis process. Forum Qual. Soc. Res.
2002, 3. [CrossRef]
49. Sanchez, T.W.; Afzalan, N. Mapping the Knowledge Domain of Urban Planning. In Planning Knowledge and
Research; Routledge: London, UK, 2017; pp. 89–104.
50. Zhang, W.; Yoshida, T.; Tang, X. Text classification based on multi-word with support vector machine. Knowl.
Based Syst. 2008, 21, 879–886. [CrossRef]
51. Mertsalov, K.; McCreary, M. Document classification with support vector machines. ACM Comput. Surv.
CSUR 2009, 42, 1–47.
Urban Sci. 2020, 4, 4 11 of 11

52. Joachims, T. Text categorization with support vector machines: Learning with many relevant features.
In European Conference on Machine Learning; Springer: Berlin/Heidelberg, Germany, 1998; pp. 137–142.
53. Vapnik, V. The Nature of Statistical Learning Theory; Springer Science Business Media: Berlin, Germany, 2013.

© 2020 by the author. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access
article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution
(CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).