2004/07/27 by S. Redner, Redner, S. · 2 citations
Decision Sciences · Physics and Astronomy · #cond-mat.stat-mech #physics.hist-ph #physics.soc-ph #scientometrics and bibliometrics research
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.physics/0407137
17 pages, 11 figures, 2-column revtex format. Revised manuscript completely rewritten in response to referee comments for PRE. Now 12 pages long in revtex4 2-column format
arxiv created 2004/10/06 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01
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.