Abstract: The triangular citation is a special citation structure that integrates direct citation, bibliographic coupling and co-citation. It has high research value and expansion significance. In order to understand the different positions of the same article in the triangular citation, forward triangular citation, bidirectional triangular citation, and reverse triangular citation are proposed. Using LIS discipline in the Web of Science core collection database as the data source, this paper analyzes three kinds of triangular citations in terms of existence probability, data characteristics, citation time, cross language citation, cross discipline citation, literature type, and author self citation. The experimental results show that the three kinds of triangular citations have distinct characteristics. In the literature type and the author self-citation, the three kinds of triangular citations are consistent; however, there are differences in the existence probability, quantitative characteristics, citation time, cross language citation, and cross discipline citation. In addition, triangular citations are of great practical value for citations that are missing and irrelevant.

Key words: Citation relationship, Forward triangle citation, Bidirectional triangle citation, Reverse triangle citation, citation feature