dorsal/arxiv
View SchemaCitation Statistics From More Than a Century of Physical Review
| Authors | S. Redner |
|---|---|
| Categories | |
| ArXiv ID | physics/0407137 |
| URL | https://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0407137 |
Abstract
We study the statistics of citations from all Physical Review journals for the 110-year period 1893 until 2003. In addition to characterizing the citation distribution and identifying publications with the highest citation impact, we investigate how citations evolve with time. There is a positive correlation between the number of citations to a paper and the average age of citations. Citations from a publication have an exponentially decaying age distribution; that is, old papers tend to not get cited. In contrast, the citations to a publication are consistent with a power-law age distribution, with an exponent close to -1 over a time range of 2 -- 20 years. We also identify a number of strongly-correlated citation bursts and other dramatic features in the time history of citations to individual publications.
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"abstract": "We study the statistics of citations from all Physical Review journals for\nthe 110-year period 1893 until 2003. In addition to characterizing the citation\ndistribution and identifying publications with the highest citation impact, we\ninvestigate how citations evolve with time. There is a positive correlation\nbetween the number of citations to a paper and the average age of citations.\nCitations from a publication have an exponentially decaying age distribution;\nthat is, old papers tend to not get cited. In contrast, the citations to a\npublication are consistent with a power-law age distribution, with an exponent\nclose to -1 over a time range of 2 -- 20 years. We also identify a number of\nstrongly-correlated citation bursts and other dramatic features in the time\nhistory of citations to individual publications.",
"arxiv_id": "physics/0407137",
"authors": [
"S. Redner"
],
"categories": [
"physics.soc-ph",
"cond-mat.stat-mech",
"physics.hist-ph"
],
"title": "Citation Statistics From More Than a Century of Physical Review",
"url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0407137"
},
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