Dietrich, JP (Dietrich, J. P.) The importance of being first: Position dependent citation rates on arXiv : astro-ph PUBLICATIONS OF THE ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY OF THE PACIFIC, 120 (864): 224-228 FEB 2008

[Eugene Garfield]

E-mail Address: jdietric at eso.org 

Author(s): Dietrich, JP (Dietrich, J. P.) 

Title: The importance of being first: Position dependent citation rates on 
arXiv : astro-ph 

Source: PUBLICATIONS OF THE ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY OF THE PACIFIC, 120 
(864): 224-228 FEB 2008 

Language: English 

Document Type: Article 

Abstract: We study the dependence of citation counts of e- Prints 
published on the arXiv:astro-ph server on their position in the daily 
astro-ph listing. Using the SPIRES literature database we reconstruct the 
astro-ph listings from 2002 July to 2005 December and determine citation 
counts for e- Prints from their ADS entry. We use Zipf plots to analyze 
the citation distributions for each astro-ph position. We find that e-
Prints appearing at or near the top of the astro-ph mailings receive 
significantly more citations than those further down the list. This 
difference is significant at the 7 sigma level and on average amounts to 2 
times more citations for papers at the top than those further down the 
listing. We propose three possible nonexclusive explanations for this 
positional citation effect and try to test them. We conclude that self- 
promotion by authors plays a role in the observed effect but cannot 
exclude that increased visibility at the top of the daily listings 
contributes to higher citation counts as well. We can rule out that the 
positional dependence of citations is caused by the coincidence of the 
submission deadline with the working hours of a geographically constrained 
set of intrinsically higher- cited authors. We discuss several ways of 
mitigating the observed effect, including splitting astro- ph into several 
subject classes, randomizing the order of e- Prints, and a novel approach 
to sorting entries by relevance to individual readers. 

Addresses: ESO, D-85748 Munich, Germany 

Reprint Address: Dietrich, JP, ESO, Karl Schwarzschild Str 2, D-85748 
Munich, Germany. 

E-mail Address: jdietric at eso.org 

Cited Reference Count: 10 

Times Cited: 0 

Publisher: UNIV CHICAGO PRESS 

Publisher Address: 1427 E 60TH ST, CHICAGO, IL 60637-2954 USA 

ISSN: 0004-6280 

HABING H
EUROPEAN REV 15 : 3 2007 

HENNEKEN EA
J ELECT PUBLISHING 9 : 2 2006 

KURTZ MJ
The NASA Astrophysics Data System: Overview 
ASTRONOMY & ASTROPHYSICS SUPPLEMENT SERIES 143 : 41 2000 

KURTZ MJ
The effect of use and access on citations 
INFORMATION PROCESSING & MANAGEMENT 41 : 1395 DOI 
10.1016/j.ipm.2005.03.010 2005
 
LAWRENCE S
Free online availability substantially increases a paper's impact 
NATURE 411 : 521 2001 

MAGUE JP
ARXIVSORTER DOCUMENT : 2007 

METCALFE TS
B AM ASTRON SOC 37 : 555 2005
 
REDNER S
How popular is your paper? An empirical study of the citation distribution 
EUROPEAN PHYSICAL JOURNAL B 4 : 131 1998 

SCHWARZ GJ
B AM ASTRON SOC 36 : 1654 2004 

SPERGEL DN
First-year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) observations: 
Determination of cosmological parameters 
ASTROPHYSICAL JOURNAL SUPPLEMENT SERIES 148 : 175 2003