Why are review articles cited more frequently than original research articles? Review articles generally receive more citations compared to original research articles.
In my mind, it should be the other way around, as journal guidelines generally solicit researchers to cite original research articles rather than review articles. So reviews should only be cited after their original content, which tends to be a small fraction of their total content, while the largest part of it consists of paraphrasing and citing research articles.
Therefore, I would venture to believe that reviews receive more citations because the rule I mentioned previously is generally not followed; and that authors usually cite reviews to avoid taking time to search for original articles (which I have to admit can be exhausting, and extremely time-consuming).
Can someone corroborate if this is the case, or am I missing something? Thanks!
I don't recall ever being told, by journal guidelines or by an editor, that I should always cite the original paper instead of a review. The review would usually contain citations of the original publications.
A review can be cited as a single source for lots of facts,  especially in the &quot;introduction&quot; or &quot;background&quot; sections of a paper. So it's likely to be more useful for the reader. A good review is also likely to be easier for many readers to understand than the original paper. And the review might be where I originally learned the information I need.  Finally, a review is likely to use uniform notation that I can adopt, whereas the original papers are more likely to have diverging notation, which may make it difficult for readers to compare them with my paper and with each other.
I've often written things like &quot;see [review] and the references there&quot;; no one has yet complained.