2004/08/22 by Sune Lehmann, S. Lehmann, A. D. Jackson +2
Computer Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Complex Network Analysis Techniques #Opinion Dynamics and Social Influence #Peer-to-Peer Network Technologies #cond-mat.dis-nn #cond-mat.other
paper · pdf · doi:10.1209/epl/i2004-10331-2
published as Europhys.Lett. 69 (2005) 298-303 · 5 pages, 2 figures
arxiv created 2004/08/22 · openalex publication_date 2005/01/01 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30
Scientific communities are characterized by strong stratification. The highly skewed frequency distribution of citations of published scientific papers suggests a relatively small number of active, cited papers embedded in a sea of inactive and uncited papers. We propose an analytically soluble model which allows for the death of nodes. This model provides an excellent description of the citation distributions for live and dead papers in the SPIRES database. Further, this model suggests a novel and general mechanism for the generation of power law distributions in networks whenever the fraction of active nodes is small.