Citation Statistics From More Than a Century of Physical Review

TL;DR

This study analyzes over a century of citation data from Physical Review journals, revealing patterns in citation distribution, impact, and evolution over time, including decay and burst phenomena.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive statistical analysis of citation dynamics over 110 years, highlighting temporal patterns and impact measures in physics literature.

Findings

Citations decay exponentially with age, especially for older papers.

Citations to a publication follow a power-law age distribution with an exponent near -1.

Identification of citation bursts and dramatic temporal features in citation histories.

Abstract

We study the statistics of citations from all Physical Review journals for the 110-year period 1893 until 2003. In addition to characterizing the citation distribution and identifying publications with the highest citation impact, we investigate how citations evolve with time. There is a positive correlation between the number of citations to a paper and the average age of citations. Citations from a publication have an exponentially decaying age distribution; that is, old papers tend to not get cited. In contrast, the citations to a publication are consistent with a power-law age distribution, with an exponent close to -1 over a time range of 2 -- 20 years. We also identify a number of strongly-correlated citation bursts and other dramatic features in the time history of citations to individual publications.