Long-term scientific impact revisited

Citation-based measures are widely used as quantitative proxies for subjective factors such as the importance of a paper or even the worth of individual researchers. Here we analyze the citation histories of 4669 papers published in journals of the American Physical Society between 1960 and 1968 and...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:European physical journal plus Vol. 137; no. 1; p. 161
Main Authors: Reia, Sandro M., Fontanari, José F.
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: Berlin/Heidelberg Springer Berlin Heidelberg 01.01.2022
Springer Nature B.V
Subjects:
Algorithms
Applied and Technical Physics
Atomic
Citation analysis
Citations
Complex Systems
Condensed Matter Physics
Datasets
Mathematical and Computational Physics
Molecular
Optical and Plasma Physics
Performance evaluation
Physics
Physics and Astronomy
Regular Article
Theoretical
Time series
ISSN:2190-5444, 2190-5444
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:Citation-based measures are widely used as quantitative proxies for subjective factors such as the importance of a paper or even the worth of individual researchers. Here we analyze the citation histories of 4669 papers published in journals of the American Physical Society between 1960 and 1968 and argue that state-of-the-art models of citation dynamics and algorithms for forecasting nonstationary time series are very likely to fail to predict the long-term (50 years after publication) citation counts of highly-cited papers using citation data collected in a short period (say, 10 years) after publication. This is so because those papers do not exhibit distinctive short-term citation patterns, although their long-term citation patterns clearly set them apart from the other papers. We conclude that even if one accepts that citation counts are proxies for the quality of papers, they are not useful evaluative tools since the short-term counts are not informative about the long-term counts in the case of highly-cited papers. GraphicAbstract
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ISSN:2190-5444
2190-5444
DOI:10.1140/epjp/s13360-022-02376-5