Are the most highly cited articles the ones that are the most downloaded?

Publication of research, innovation, challenges and successes
is of critical importance to the evolution of more effective distance
education programming. Publication in peer reviewed journal format is
the most prestigious and the most widespread form of dissemination in
education and most other disciplines, thus the importance of
understanding what is published and its impact on both researchers and
practitioners. In this article we identify and classify the leading
articles in arguably the leading peer reviewed journals in this
discipline.

The journal The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning
(IRRODL) is a peer reviewed academic journal that has been published
since 2000. The journal has published between 3 and 6 issues annually
with between 50 and 111 research articles per volume. In order to assess
the general and the particular impact of highly cited articles this
work describes the main bibliometric indicators of the IRRODL journal
and these are compared with the total galley views in all formats, PDF,
HTML, EPUB and MP3, that IRRODL publishes. In addition to identifying
characteristics of the most widely cited articles this research
determines if there is a correlation between the articles most highly
cited by other publishing researchers and the number of views,
indicating interest from both practitioners and research communities.
The results show a significant and positive relationship between the
total number of citations and the number of views received by articles
published in the journal, indicating the impact of the journal extends
beyond active publishers to practitioner consumers.

International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning;
IRRODL; Highly cited papers; Google Scholar; Research trends; Open and
Distance Learning