Recency predicts bursts in the evolution of author citations

Filipi Nascimento Silva; Aditya Tandon; Diego Raphael Amancio; Alessandro Flammini; Filippo Menczer; Staša Milojević; Santo Fortunato

doi:10.1162/qss_a_00070

Quantitative Science Studies (Jan 2020)

Recency predicts bursts in the evolution of author citations

Filipi Nascimento Silva,
Aditya Tandon,
Diego Raphael Amancio,
Alessandro Flammini,
Filippo Menczer,
Staša Milojević,
Santo Fortunato

Affiliations

Filipi Nascimento Silva: ORCiD; Indiana University Network Science Institute, Indiana University, Bloomington, USA
Aditya Tandon: ORCiD; Center for Complex Networks and Systems Research, Luddy School of Informatics, Computing and Engineering, Indiana University, Bloomington, USA
Diego Raphael Amancio: Institute of Mathematics and Computer Science, University of São Paulo, São Carlos, Brazil
Alessandro Flammini: Indiana University Network Science Institute, Indiana University, Bloomington, USA
Filippo Menczer: ORCiD; Indiana University Network Science Institute, Indiana University, Bloomington, USA
Staša Milojević: Center for Complex Networks and Systems Research, Luddy School of Informatics, Computing and Engineering, Indiana University, Bloomington, USA
Santo Fortunato: ORCiD; Indiana University Network Science Institute, Indiana University, Bloomington, USA

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1162/qss_a_00070
Journal volume & issue: Vol. 1, no. 3
pp. 1298 – 1308

Abstract

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AbstractThe citations process for scientific papers has been studied extensively. But while the citations accrued by authors are the sum of the citations of their papers, translating the dynamics of citation accumulation from the paper to the author level is not trivial. Here we conduct a systematic study of the evolution of author citations, and in particular their bursty dynamics. We find empirical evidence of a correlation between the number of citations most recently accrued by an author and the number of citations they receive in the future. Using a simple model where the probability for an author to receive new citations depends only on the number of citations collected in the previous 12–24 months, we are able to reproduce both the citation and burst size distributions of authors across multiple decades.

Published in Quantitative Science Studies

ISSN: 2641-3337 (Online)
Publisher: The MIT Press
Country of publisher: United States
LCC subjects: Science: Science (General)
Website: https://direct.mit.edu/qss

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