IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/phsmap/v448y2016icp235-247.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

What is the dimension of citation space?

Author

Listed:
  • Clough, James R.
  • Evans, Tim S.

Abstract

Citation networks represent the flow of information between agents. They are constrained in time and so form directed acyclic graphs which have a causal structure. Here we provide novel quantitative methods to characterise that structure by adapting methods used in the causal set approach to quantum gravity by considering the networks to be embedded in a Minkowski spacetime and measuring its dimension using Myrheim–Meyer and Midpoint-scaling estimates. We illustrate these methods on citation networks from the arXiv, supreme court judgements from the USA, and patents and find that otherwise similar citation networks have measurably different dimensions. We suggest that these differences can be interpreted in terms of the level of diversity or narrowness in citation behaviour.

Suggested Citation

  • Clough, James R. & Evans, Tim S., 2016. "What is the dimension of citation space?," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 448(C), pages 235-247.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:phsmap:v:448:y:2016:i:c:p:235-247
    DOI: 10.1016/j.physa.2015.12.053
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S037843711501081X
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only. Journal offers the option of making the article available online on Science direct for a fee of $3,000
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.physa.2015.12.053?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Terrence A. Brooks, 1986. "Evidence of complex citer motivations," Journal of the American Society for Information Science, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 37(1), pages 34-36, January.
    2. S. Redner, 1998. "How popular is your paper? An empirical study of the citation distribution," The European Physical Journal B: Condensed Matter and Complex Systems, Springer;EDP Sciences, vol. 4(2), pages 131-134, July.
    3. Wu, Yan & Fu, Tom Z.J. & Chiu, Dah Ming, 2014. "Generalized preferential attachment considering aging," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 8(3), pages 650-658.
    4. M. V. Simkin & V. P. Roychowdhury, 2005. "Stochastic modeling of citation slips," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 62(3), pages 367-384, March.
    5. T. S. Evans & N. Hopkins & B. S. Kaube, 2012. "Universality of performance indicators based on citation and reference counts," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 93(2), pages 473-495, November.
    6. Bommarito, Michael J. & Katz, Daniel Martin & Zelner, Jonathan L. & Fowler, James H., 2010. "Distance measures for dynamic citation networks," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 389(19), pages 4201-4208.
    7. Zheng Xie & Zhenzheng Ouyang & Pengyuan Zhang & Dongyun Yi & Dexing Kong, 2015. "Modeling the Citation Network by Network Cosmology," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(3), pages 1-13, March.
    8. Ren, Fu-Xin & Shen, Hua-Wei & Cheng, Xue-Qi, 2012. "Modeling the clustering in citation networks," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 391(12), pages 3533-3539.
    9. Young-Ho Eom & Santo Fortunato, 2011. "Characterizing and Modeling Citation Dynamics," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 6(9), pages 1-7, September.
    10. Xie, Zheng & Zhu, Jiang & Kong, Dexing & Li, Jianping, 2015. "A random geometric graph built on a time-varying Riemannian manifold," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 436(C), pages 492-498.
    11. Mikhail V. Simkin & Vwani P. Roychowdhury, 2007. "A mathematical theory of citing," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 58(11), pages 1661-1673, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Vasiliauskaite, Vaiva & Evans, Tim S. & Expert, Paul, 2022. "Cycle analysis of Directed Acyclic Graphs," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 596(C).
    2. Wen, Tao & Jiang, Wen, 2019. "Identifying influential nodes based on fuzzy local dimension in complex networks," Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, Elsevier, vol. 119(C), pages 332-342.
    3. Wen, Tao & Jiang, Wen, 2018. "An information dimension of weighted complex networks," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 501(C), pages 388-399.
    4. Martin Ho & Henry CW Price & Tim S Evans & Eoin O'Sullivan, 2023. "Order in Innovation," Papers 2302.13076, arXiv.org.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. S. R. Goldberg & H. Anthony & T. S. Evans, 2015. "Modelling citation networks," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 105(3), pages 1577-1604, December.
    2. Xie, Zheng & Ouyang, Zhenzheng & Liu, Qi & Li, Jianping, 2016. "A geometric graph model for citation networks of exponentially growing scientific papers," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 456(C), pages 167-175.
    3. Thelwall, Mike, 2016. "Citation count distributions for large monodisciplinary journals," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 10(3), pages 863-874.
    4. Tol, Richard S.J., 2013. "The Matthew effect for cohorts of economists," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 7(2), pages 522-527.
    5. Brito, Ana C.M. & Silva, Filipi N. & Amancio, Diego R., 2021. "Associations between author-level metrics in subsequent time periods," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 15(4).
    6. Yin, Yian & Wang, Dashun, 2017. "The time dimension of science: Connecting the past to the future," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 11(2), pages 608-621.
    7. Thelwall, Mike, 2016. "The discretised lognormal and hooked power law distributions for complete citation data: Best options for modelling and regression," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 10(2), pages 336-346.
    8. Bramoullé, Yann & Currarini, Sergio & Jackson, Matthew O. & Pin, Paolo & Rogers, Brian W., 2012. "Homophily and long-run integration in social networks," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 147(5), pages 1754-1786.
    9. Angelou, Konstantinos & Maragakis, Michael & Argyrakis, Panos, 2019. "A structural analysis of the patent citation network by the k-shell decomposition method," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 521(C), pages 476-483.
    10. Jorge A. V. Tohalino & Laura V. C. Quispe & Diego R. Amancio, 2021. "Analyzing the relationship between text features and grants productivity," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(5), pages 4255-4275, May.
    11. Lina M. Cortés & Andrés Mora-Valencia & Javier Perote, 2016. "The productivity of top researchers: a semi-nonparametric approach," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 109(2), pages 891-915, November.
    12. Michal Brzezinski, 2015. "Power laws in citation distributions: evidence from Scopus," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 103(1), pages 213-228, April.
    13. Sangwal, Keshra, 2013. "Citation and impact factor distributions of scientific journals published in individual countries," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 7(2), pages 487-504.
    14. Xie, Zheng & Ouyang, Zhenzheng & Li, Jianping, 2016. "A geometric graph model for coauthorship networks," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 10(1), pages 299-311.
    15. Thelwall, Mike, 2016. "The precision of the arithmetic mean, geometric mean and percentiles for citation data: An experimental simulation modelling approach," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 10(1), pages 110-123.
    16. Colman, E.R. & Rodgers, G.J., 2013. "Complex scale-free networks with tunable power-law exponent and clustering," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 392(21), pages 5501-5510.
    17. Cinzia Daraio & Giancarlo Ruocco, 2012. "An Empirical Approach to Compare the Performance of Heterogeneous Academic Fields," DIAG Technical Reports 2012-03, Department of Computer, Control and Management Engineering, Universita' degli Studi di Roma "La Sapienza".
    18. Bruno S. Frey & Katja Rost, 2010. "Do Rankings Reflect Research Quality?," Journal of Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 13(1), pages 1-38, May.
    19. Cao, Xuanyu & Chen, Yan & Ray Liu, K.J., 2016. "A data analytic approach to quantifying scientific impact," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 10(2), pages 471-484.
    20. Sangwal, Keshra, 2014. "Distributions of citations of papers of individual authors publishing in different scientific disciplines: Application of Langmuir-type function," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 8(4), pages 972-984.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:phsmap:v:448:y:2016:i:c:p:235-247. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/physica-a-statistical-mechpplications/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.