33,902 research outputs found
How citation boosts promote scientific paradigm shifts and Nobel Prizes
Nobel Prizes are commonly seen to be among the most prestigious achievements
of our times. Based on mining several million citations, we quantitatively
analyze the processes driving paradigm shifts in science. We find that
groundbreaking discoveries of Nobel Prize Laureates and other famous scientists
are not only acknowledged by many citations of their landmark papers.
Surprisingly, they also boost the citation rates of their previous
publications. Given that innovations must outcompete the rich-gets-richer
effect for scientific citations, it turns out that they can make their way only
through citation cascades. A quantitative analysis reveals how and why they
happen. Science appears to behave like a self-organized critical system, in
which citation cascades of all sizes occur, from continuous scientific progress
all the way up to scientific revolutions, which change the way we see our
world. Measuring the "boosting effect" of landmark papers, our analysis reveals
how new ideas and new players can make their way and finally triumph in a world
dominated by established paradigms. The underlying "boost factor" is also
useful to discover scientific breakthroughs and talents much earlier than
through classical citation analysis, which by now has become a widespread
method to measure scientific excellence, influencing scientific careers and the
distribution of research funds. Our findings reveal patterns of collective
social behavior, which are also interesting from an attention economics
perspective. Understanding the origin of scientific authority may therefore
ultimately help to explain, how social influence comes about and why the value
of goods depends so strongly on the attention they attract.Comment: 6 pages, 6 figure
Citations: Indicators of Quality? The Impact Fallacy
We argue that citation is a composed indicator: short-term citations can be
considered as currency at the research front, whereas long-term citations can
contribute to the codification of knowledge claims into concept symbols.
Knowledge claims at the research front are more likely to be transitory and are
therefore problematic as indicators of quality. Citation impact studies focus
on short-term citation, and therefore tend to measure not epistemic quality,
but involvement in current discourses in which contributions are positioned by
referencing. We explore this argument using three case studies: (1) citations
of the journal Soziale Welt as an example of a venue that tends not to publish
papers at a research front, unlike, for example, JACS; (2) Robert Merton as a
concept symbol across theories of citation; and (3) the Multi-RPYS
("Multi-Referenced Publication Year Spectroscopy") of the journals
Scientometrics, Gene, and Soziale Welt. We show empirically that the
measurement of "quality" in terms of citations can further be qualified:
short-term citation currency at the research front can be distinguished from
longer-term processes of incorporation and codification of knowledge claims
into bodies of knowledge. The recently introduced Multi-RPYS can be used to
distinguish between short-term and long-term impacts.Comment: accepted for publication in Frontiers in Research Metrics and
Analysis; doi: 10.3389/frma.2016.0000
Tracing scientific influence
Scientometrics is the field of quantitative studies of scholarly activity. It
has been used for systematic studies of the fundamentals of scholarly practice
as well as for evaluation purposes. Although advocated from the very beginning
the use of scientometrics as an additional method for science history is still
under explored. In this paper we show how a scientometric analysis can be used
to shed light on the reception history of certain outstanding scholars. As a
case, we look into citation patterns of a specific paper by the American
sociologist Robert K. Merton.Comment: 25 pages LaTe
Quantitative and empirical demonstration of the Matthew effect in a study of career longevity
The Matthew effect refers to the adage written some two-thousand years ago in
the Gospel of St. Matthew: "For to all those who have, more will be given."
Even two millennia later, this idiom is used by sociologists to qualitatively
describe the dynamics of individual progress and the interplay between status
and reward. Quantitative studies of professional careers are traditionally
limited by the difficulty in measuring progress and the lack of data on
individual careers. However, in some professions, there are well-defined
metrics that quantify career longevity, success, and prowess, which together
contribute to the overall success rating for an individual employee. Here we
demonstrate testable evidence of the age-old Matthew "rich get richer" effect,
wherein the longevity and past success of an individual lead to a cumulative
advantage in further developing his/her career. We develop an exactly solvable
stochastic career progress model that quantitatively incorporates the Matthew
effect, and validate our model predictions for several competitive professions.
We test our model on the careers of 400,000 scientists using data from six
high-impact journals, and further confirm our findings by testing the model on
the careers of more than 20,000 athletes in four sports leagues. Our model
highlights the importance of early career development, showing that many
careers are stunted by the relative disadvantage associated with inexperience.Comment: 13 pages, 7 figures, 4 Tables; Revisions in response to critique and
suggestions of referee
A Review of Theory and Practice in Scientometrics
Scientometrics is the study of the quantitative aspects of the process of science as a communication system. It is centrally, but not only, concerned with the analysis of citations in the academic literature. In recent years it has come to play a major role in the measurement and evaluation of research performance. In this review we consider: the historical development of scientometrics, sources of citation data, citation metrics and the âlaws" of scientometrics, normalisation, journal impact factors and other journal metrics, visualising and mapping science, evaluation and policy, and future developments
Nonuniversal power law scaling in the probability distribution of scientific citations
We develop a model for the distribution of scientific citations. The model
involves a dual mechanism: in the direct mechanism, the author of a new paper
finds an old paper A and cites it. In the indirect mechanism, the author of a
new paper finds an old paper A only via the reference list of a newer
intermediary paper B, which has previously cited A. By comparison to citation
databases, we find that papers having few citations are cited mainly by the
direct mechanism. Papers already having many citations ('classics') are cited
mainly by the indirect mechanism. The indirect mechanism gives a power-law
tail. The 'tipping point' at which a paper becomes a classic is about 21
citations for papers published in the Institute for Scientific Information
(ISI) Web of Science database in 1981, 29 for Physical Review D papers
published from 1975-1994, and 39 for all publications from a list of high
h-index chemists assembled in 2007. The power-law exponent is not universal.
Individuals who are highly cited have a systematically smaller exponent than
individuals who are less cited.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures, 2 table
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