Year: 2016
Type: article
Abstract: In this article, we show that the dramatic increase in the number of research articles indexed in the Web of Science database impacts the commonly observed distributions of citations within these articles. First, we document that the growing number of physics articles in recent years is attributed to existing journals publishing more and more articles rather than more new journals coming into being as it happens in computer science. Second, even though the references from the more recent articles generally cover a longer time span, the newer articles are cited more frequently than the older ones if the uneven article growth is not corrected for. Nevertheless, despite this change in the distribution of citations, the citation behavior of scientists does not seem to have changed.
DOI: 10.1002/asi.23718
Authors: Lovro Šubelj, Dalibor Fiala
Institutions: University of Ljubljana, University of West Bohemia in Pilsen
Language: English
Subfield: Statistics, Probability and Uncertainty
Field: Decision Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2229525633