Redner S "How popular is your paper? An empirical study of the citation distribution" EUROPEAN PHYSICAL JOURNAL B 4 (2): 131-134 JUL 1998

[Eugene Garfield]

S. Redner  :  redner at buphy.bu.edu


Title     How popular is your paper? An empirical study of the citation
distribution
Author    Redner S
Journal   EUROPEAN PHYSICAL JOURNAL B  4 (2): 131-134 JUL 1998

 Document type: Article    Language: English
 Cited References: 5       Times Cited: 62


Abstract:
Numerical data for the distribution of citations are examined for: (i)
papers published in 1981 in journals which are catalogued by the Institute
for Scientific Information (783,339 papers) and (ii) 20 years of
publications in Physical Review D: vols. 11-50 (24,296 papers). A Zipf plot
of the number of citations to a given paper versus its citation rank appears
to be consistent with a power-law dependence for leading rank papers, with
exponent close to -1/2. This, in turn, suggests that the number of papers
with x citations, N(x), has a large-x power law decay N(x) similar to
x(-alpha); with alpha approximate to 3.

Addresses:
Redner S, Boston Univ, Ctr Polymer Studies, Ctr Biodynam, Boston, MA 02215
USA
Boston Univ, Ctr Polymer Studies, Ctr Biodynam, Boston, MA 02215 USA

Publisher:
SPRINGER VERLAG, NEW YORK

IDS Number:
116DH

ISSN:
1434-6028
Cited Author            Cited Work                Volume      Page      Year

 *I SCI INF            SCI CIT IND J CIT RE
 GALAMBOS J            ASYMPTOTIC THEORY EX                            1978
 LAHERRERE J           EUR PHYS J B                   2       525      1998
 SHOCKLEY W            P IRE                         45       279      1957
 ZIPF GK               HUMAN BEHAV PRINCIPL                            1949