A Citation Analysis of Research in Implicit Religion Published Outside the Journal Implicit Religion: For Whom the Citations Toll

Lewis (2005) provided a bibliometric analysis of the term 'implicit religion' within a selection of popular databases, and found that only a modest amount of articles actually cited the term (n = 77). He concluded the term 'implicit religion' has not yet gained widespread attention. Tangentially, Lewis questioned if the literature on 'implicit religion' was dominated by a small number of highly influential, and hence widely cited, articles. To test this, the present study empirically examined the frequency with which each of these 77 publications that cited the term 'implicit religion' had been subsequently cited. Each of these publications was entered into the Web of Science Citation Index database. In total, the 77 publications had been collectively cited 98 times, and the frequency of citations ranged from 0 to 27, with a mean citation count of 1.28. Of the 77 publications entered into the database, only 19 publications were cited. The five most highly cited publications were: Davie (1990; 27 citations), Bailey (1983; 17 citations), Bailey (1990c; 9 citations) and Allcock (1988; 8 citations). These data suggest that the implicit religion literature is dominated by a small number of publications that are published by a small number of authors. However, these publications are not widely cited themselves. Limitations of the present study are discussed.