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The lengthening of papers’ life expectancy: a diachronous analysis

Author

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  • Hamid Bouabid

    (Mohammed V - Agdal University)

  • Vincent Larivière

    (Université de Montréal
    Université du Québec à Montréal)

Abstract

The aging of scientific has generally been studied using synchronous approaches, i.e., based on references made by papers. This paper uses a diachronous model based on citations received by papers to study the changes in the life expectancy of three corpus of papers: papers from G6 and BRICS countries, papers published in Science, Nature, Physical Review and the Lancet and all papers divided into four broad fields: medical sciences, natural sciences and engineering, social sciences and arts and humanities. It shows that that: (i) life expectancy is extensively different from a corpus to another and may be either finite or infinite, meaning that the corpus would never be obsolete from a mathematical perspective; (ii) life expectancy for scientific literature has lengthened over the 1980–2000 period; (iii) life expectancy of developed countries’ (G6) literature is on average shorter than that of emerging countries (BRICS).

Suggested Citation

  • Hamid Bouabid & Vincent Larivière, 2013. "The lengthening of papers’ life expectancy: a diachronous analysis," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 97(3), pages 695-717, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:scient:v:97:y:2013:i:3:d:10.1007_s11192-013-0995-7
    DOI: 10.1007/s11192-013-0995-7
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Liang, Guoqiang & Hou, Haiyan & Ding, Ying & Hu, Zhigang, 2020. "Knowledge recency to the birth of Nobel Prize-winning articles: Gender, career stage, and country," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 14(3).
    2. Mingyang Wang & Jiaqi Zhang & Guangsheng Chen & Kah-Hin Chai, 2019. "Examining the influence of open access on journals’ citation obsolescence by modeling the actual citation process," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 119(3), pages 1621-1641, June.
    3. Ugo Finardi, 2017. "Long time series of highly cited articles: an empirical study," IRCrES Working Paper 201712, CNR-IRCrES Research Institute on Sustainable Economic Growth - Moncalieri (TO) ITALY - former Institute for Economic Research on Firms and Growth - Torino (TO) ITALY.
    4. Pablo Dorta-González & Emilio Gómez-Déniz, 2022. "Modeling the obsolescence of research literature in disciplinary journals through the age of their cited references," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(6), pages 2901-2931, June.
    5. Hamid Bouabid, 2014. "Science and technology metrics for research policy evaluation: some insights from a Moroccan experience," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 101(1), pages 899-915, October.
    6. Fabio S. V. Silva & Peter A. Schulz & Everard C. M. Noyons, 2019. "Co-authorship networks and research impact in large research facilities: benchmarking internal reports and bibliometric databases," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 118(1), pages 93-108, January.
    7. Shahzad, Murtuza & Alhoori, Hamed & Freedman, Reva & Rahman, Shaikh Abdul, 2022. "Quantifying the online long-term interest in research," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 16(2).

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