Last but not Least: Additional Positional Effects on Citation and Readership in arXiv
Asif-ul Haque, Paul Ginsparg

TL;DR
This study investigates how article position in arXiv announcements affects readership and citations, revealing both positive and negative effects depending on position and submission timing, with implications for understanding visibility and procrastination behaviors.
Contribution
It uncovers a reverse-visibility effect at the end of announcement lists and a procrastination effect, expanding understanding of positional influences on article impact in arXiv.
Findings
Articles near the end of lists receive increased readership and citations.
Last-minute submissions before deadlines have higher citation rates.
Reverse-visibility and procrastination effects are significant in theoretical high energy physics.
Abstract
We continue investigation of the effect of position in announcements of newly received articles, a single day artifact, with citations received over the course of ensuing years. Earlier work [arXiv:0907.4740, arXiv:0805.0307] focused on the "visibility" effect for positions near the beginnings of announcements, and on the "self-promotion" effect associated to authors intentionally aiming for these positions, with both found correlated to a later enhanced citation rate. Here we consider a "reverse-visibility" effect for positions near the ends of announcements, and on a "procrastination" effect associated to submissions made within the 20 minute period just before the daily deadline. For two large subcommunities of theoretical high energy physics, we find a clear "reverse-visibility" effect, in which articles near the ends of the lists receive a boost in both short-term readership and…
Peer Reviews
No public reviews on file for this paper yet. If you reviewed it on a platform where reviews are public (OpenReview, ICLR, NeurIPS, ICML), you can paste yours below so the community can read it here.
Videos
No videos yet. Explain this paper in a talk, walkthrough, or lecture? Add one.
