Growing Impact of Older Articles

[David Wojick]

Eric, I posted your comment here into the comments on the Scholarly Kitchen 
article, with the corrected URL. See 
http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2014/11/10/growing-impact-of-older-articles/#comment-147814

Very interesting analysis!

David Wojick

At 12:33 PM 11/10/2014, you wrote:
>Adminstrative info for SIGMETRICS (for example unsubscribe):
>http://web.utk.edu/~gwhitney/sigmetrics.html
>
>This paper doesn't present much we didn't already know and in facts omits 
>known explanations.
>
>My colleagues Vincent Larivière, Yves Gingras and I suggested several 
>years ago that this phenomenon was due to the fact that the scientific 
>literature is not growing as fast as the growth of researchers using this 
>literature and since researchers have plenty of time to "digest" what is 
>being produced now, they are increasingly citing older articles.
>
>http://science-metrix.com/en/publications/scientific-publications#/en/publications/scientific-papers/the-decline-in-the-concentration-of-citations-1900-2007
>
>
>This was confirmed mathematically by Leo Egghe:
>
>"This paper proves two regularities that were found in the paper [V. 
>Larivière, E. Archambault and Y. Gingras (2007).
>Long-term patterns in the aging of the scientific literature, 1900-2004. 
>Proceedings of ISSI 2007. CSIC, Madrid, Spain, 449-456, 2007].
>The first is that the mean as well as the median reference age increases 
>in time. The second is that the Price Index decreases in time.
>
>Using an exponential literature growth model we prove both regularities. 
>Hence we show that
>the two results do not have a special informetric reason but that they are 
>just a mathematical
>consequence of a widely accepted simple literature growth model."
>
>https://doclib.uhasselt.be/dspace/bitstream/1942/9283/2/showing%202.pdf
>
>
>Eric
>
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: ASIS&T Special Interest Group on Metrics 
>[mailto:SIGMETRICS at LISTSERV.UTK.EDU] On Behalf Of Philip Davis
>Sent: November-10-14 4:09 PM
>To: SIGMETRICS at LISTSERV.UTK.EDU
>Subject: [SIGMETRICS] Growing Impact of Older Articles
>
>Adminstrative info for SIGMETRICS (for example unsubscribe):
>http://web.utk.edu/~gwhitney/sigmetrics.html
>
>A recent study by Google employees reveals a growth in the proportion of 
>citations to older articles. While digital publishing, mass digitization, 
>full text indexing and better search engines may provide some explanation, 
>the trend started decades ago. Something much bigger is taking place.
>
>see:
>http://wp.me/pcvbl-aey