Counting Citations or Inflating Influence? Trends in Urban Planning Citation Inflation

Citation-based metrics play a growing role in evaluating scholarly impact, yet rising citation counts may reflect not only accumulation over time but also inflationary dynamics in the pace of citation generation. This study examines citation patterns among tenure-track and tenured faculty in U.S. urban planning programs from 2015 to 2024 using a dual stock–flow perspective. Cumulative citation totals (stock) are analyzed to document stratification by academic rank and institutional context. In contrast, annual citation accrual (flow), the year-to-year change in citations, is used to assess whether citation rates themselves are increasing over time. To avoid distortions associated with early baseline alignment and profile corrections in Google Scholar, primary flow analyses focus on the post-transition period from 2018 to 2024. Descriptive trends and multivariate models show that median and upper-tail annual citation accrual increase systematically over this period, even after controlling for rank, institutional classification, gender, and career-stage proxies. These patterns indicate a robust period effect consistent with inflation-like dynamics in the field’s citation environment. By distinguishing accumulation from acceleration, the study demonstrates that recent growth in citations in urban planning reflects not only cumulative advantage but also an intensifying pace of citation accumulation, with important implications for research evaluation in applied and interdisciplinary disciplines.