The dispersion of the citation distribution of top scientists' publications

TL;DR

This paper analyzes how citations are distributed among top scientists' publications, examining the applicability of the Pareto rule, dispersion measures, uncited works, and differences across fields.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of citation dispersion and uncited publications among top scientists, challenging the Pareto rule and exploring field-specific patterns.

Findings

The 80-20 Pareto rule does not hold for citations of top scientists.

Citation distribution shows high dispersion measured by Gini coefficient.

A significant share of top scientists' publications remain uncited.

Abstract

This work explores the distribution of citations for the publications of top scientists. A first objective is to find out whether the 80-20 Pareto rule applies, that is if 80% of the citations to a top scientist's work concern 20% of their publications. Observing that the rule does not apply, we also measure the dispersion of the citation distribution by means of the Gini coefficient. Further, we investigate the question of what share of a top scientist' publications go uncited. Finally, we study the relation between the dispersion of the citation distribution and the share of uncited publications. As well as the overall level, the analyses are carried out at the field and discipline level, to assess differences across them.