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arXiv:0809.5250physics.soc-ph

The decline in the concentration of citations, 1900-2007

Vincent Lariviere, Yves Gingras, Eric Archambault

Abstract

This paper challenges recent research (Evans, 2008) reporting that the concentration of cited scientific literature increases with the online availability of articles and journals. Using Thomson Reuters' Web of Science, the present paper analyses changes in the concentration of citations received (two- and five-year citation windows) by papers published between 1900 and 2005. Three measures of concentration are used: the percentage of papers that received at least one citation (cited papers); the percentage of papers needed to account for 20, 50 and 80 percent of the citations; and, the Herfindahl-Hirschman index. These measures are used for four broad disciplines: natural sciences and engineering, medical fields, social sciences, and the humanities. All these measures converge and show that, contrary to what was reported by Evans, the dispersion of citations is actually increasing.

arXiv comments
9 pages
Journal reference
DOI
Subjects
physics.soc-phPhysics and Society cs.DLDigital Libraries

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  1. The science that’s never been cited 1 comment

    • In the methods section, they do say that "first author self-citations were excluded." One of the figures in the Nature article also pulls out self-citations. https://arxiv.org/abs/0809.5250

      greeneggsView on HNParent context

  2. Academics argue over how many people read and cite their papers (2014) 1 comment

    • Here are the original papers cited: Meho 2007: http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/2058-7058/20/1/33/... (not open access) Evans 2008: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.183... Lariviere & Gingras 2008(?): https://arxiv.org/pdf/0809.5250v1.pdf The…

      veddoxView on HNParent context

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