IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/scient/v127y2022i8d10.1007_s11192-022-04437-z.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Encoding the citation life-cycle: the operationalization of a literature-aging conceptual model

Author

Listed:
  • Zhenyu Gou

    (Wuhan University
    Wuhan University)

  • Fan Meng

    (Peking University)

  • Zaida Chinchilla-Rodríguez

    (Peking University
    Instituto de Políticas y Bienes Públicos (IPP))

  • Yi Bu

    (Peking University)

Abstract

In this study, we introduce a new literature-aging conceptual model to study the citation curve and discuss its implications. First, we improve the conceptual model by adding a period to describe the “death” of citations. Second, we offer a feasible operationalization for this conceptual model and implement a set of cross-discipline publications in the Web of Science to test its performance. Furthermore, we propose two measurements according to the new model—“Sleeping Period” and “Recognition Period”—to capture publications’ citation curve patterns. For instance, we find that half of the papers in Arts & Humanities published in 1985 receive no or extremely few citations in the first 5 years after their publication; after that, on average, those papers in Arts & Humanities have a 5-year-long period when their citations grow rapidly. In addition, we observe a special phenomenon named “literature revival” as some publications may have multiple citation life-cycles, which has received little attention from current research. Finally, we discuss the implications of our study, especially the application of the Sleeping Period and Recognition Period in improving scientific evaluation and collection development in libraries, and the inspiration of the “literature revival”.

Suggested Citation

  • Zhenyu Gou & Fan Meng & Zaida Chinchilla-Rodríguez & Yi Bu, 2022. "Encoding the citation life-cycle: the operationalization of a literature-aging conceptual model," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(8), pages 5027-5052, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:scient:v:127:y:2022:i:8:d:10.1007_s11192-022-04437-z
    DOI: 10.1007/s11192-022-04437-z
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11192-022-04437-z
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11192-022-04437-z?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. L. Egghe, 1997. "Price index and its relation to the mean and median reference age," Journal of the American Society for Information Science, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 48(6), pages 564-573, June.
    2. Ching‐Chih Chen, 1972. "The use patterns of physics journals in a large academic research library," Journal of the American Society for Information Science, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 23(4), pages 254-270, July.
    3. Marcel Clermont & Johanna Krolak & Dirk Tunger, 2021. "Does the citation period have any effect on the informative value of selected citation indicators in research evaluations?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(2), pages 1019-1047, February.
    4. Rodrigo Costas & Thed N. Leeuwen & María Bordons, 2010. "Self-citations at the meso and individual levels: effects of different calculation methods," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 82(3), pages 517-537, March.
    5. Hong Huang & James Andrews & Jiang Tang, 2012. "Citation characterization and impact normalization in bioinformatics journals," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 63(3), pages 490-497, March.
    6. Sangwal, K., 2011. "On the growth of citations of publication output of individual authors," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 5(4), pages 554-564.
    7. Abramo, Giovanni & D’Angelo, Ciriaco Andrea & Felici, Giovanni, 2019. "Predicting publication long-term impact through a combination of early citations and journal impact factor," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 13(1), pages 32-49.
    8. Bornmann, Lutz & Haunschild, Robin & Mutz, Rüdiger, 2020. "Should citations be field-normalized in evaluative bibliometrics? An empirical analysis based on propensity score matching," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 14(4).
    9. Philippe Mongeon & Adèle Paul-Hus, 2016. "The journal coverage of Web of Science and Scopus: a comparative analysis," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 106(1), pages 213-228, January.
    10. Thijs Bol & Mathijs de Vaan & Arnout van de Rijt, 2018. "The Matthew effect in science funding," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 115(19), pages 4887-4890, May.
    11. Ronald Rousseau, 2005. "Median and percentile impact factors: A set of new indicators," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 63(3), pages 431-441, June.
    12. Virgil Diodato & Fran Smith, 1993. "Obsolescence of music literature," Journal of the American Society for Information Science, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 44(2), pages 101-112, March.
    13. Jian Wang, 2013. "Citation time window choice for research impact evaluation," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 94(3), pages 851-872, March.
    14. Ming‐Yueh Tsay, 1998. "Library journal use and citation half‐life in medical science," Journal of the American Society for Information Science, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 49(14), pages 1283-1292.
    15. Lin Zhang & Wolfgang Glänzel, 2017. "A citation-based cross-disciplinary study on literature aging: part I—the synchronous approach," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 111(3), pages 1573-1589, June.
    16. Yanan Wang & An Zeng & Ying Fan & Zengru Di, 2019. "Ranking scientific publications considering the aging characteristics of citations," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 120(1), pages 155-166, July.
    17. Waltman, Ludo, 2016. "A review of the literature on citation impact indicators," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 10(2), pages 365-391.
    18. S. L. Sangam, 1999. "Obsolescence of literature in the field of psychology," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 44(1), pages 33-46, January.
    19. Aurel Avramescu, 1979. "Actuality and Obsolescence of Scientific Literature," Journal of the American Society for Information Science, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 30(5), pages 296-303, September.
    20. Emanuela Reale & Dragana Avramov & Kubra Canhial & Claire Donovan & Ramon Flecha & Poul Holm & Charles Larkin & Benedetto Lepori & Judith Mosoni-Fried & Esther Oliver & Emilia Primeri & Lidia Puigvert, 2018. "A review of literature on evaluating the scientific, social and political impact of social sciences and humanities research," Research Evaluation, Oxford University Press, vol. 27(4), pages 298-308.
    21. L. Egghe, 2010. "A model showing the increase in time of the average and median reference age and the decrease in time of the Price Index," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 82(2), pages 243-248, February.
    22. Olesia Iefremova & Kamil Wais & Marcin Kozak, 2018. "Biographical articles in scientific literature: analysis of articles indexed in Web of Science," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 117(3), pages 1695-1719, December.
    23. Wolfgang Glänzel & Balázs Schlemmer & Bart Thijs, 2003. "Better late than never? On the chance to become highly cited only beyond the standard bibliometric time horizon," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 58(3), pages 571-586, November.
    24. R. Bailón-Moreno & E. Jurado-Alameda & R. Ruiz-Baños & J. P. Courtial, 2005. "The unified scientometric model. Fractality and transfractality," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 63(2), pages 231-257, April.
    25. Hong Huang & James Andrews & Jiang Tang, 2012. "Citation characterization and impact normalization in bioinformatics journals," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 63(3), pages 490-497, March.
    26. Félix Moya-Anegón & Zaida Chinchilla-Rodríguez & Benjamín Vargas-Quesada & Elena Corera-Álvarez & Francisco José Muñoz-Fernández & Antonio González-Molina & Victor Herrero-Solana, 2007. "Coverage analysis of Scopus: A journal metric approach," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 73(1), pages 53-78, October.
    27. Usha Gupta, 1990. "Obsolescence of physics literature: Exponential decrease of the density of citations to Physical Review articles with age," Journal of the American Society for Information Science, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 41(4), pages 282-287, June.
    28. T. Liskiewicz & G. Liskiewicz & J. Paczesny, 2021. "Factors affecting the citations of papers in tribology journals," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(4), pages 3321-3336, April.
    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. Liu, Jialin & Chen, Hongkan & Liu, Zhibo & Bu, Yi & Gu, Weiye, 2022. "Non-linearity between referencing behavior and citation impact: A large-scale, discipline-level analysis," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 16(3).
    2. Chakraborty, Joyita & Pradhan, Dinesh K. & Nandi, Subrata, 2024. "A multiple k-means cluster ensemble framework for clustering citation trajectories," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 18(2).

    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. Gerson Pech & Catarina Delgado, 2020. "Percentile and stochastic-based approach to the comparison of the number of citations of articles indexed in different bibliographic databases," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 123(1), pages 223-252, April.
    2. Waltman, Ludo, 2016. "A review of the literature on citation impact indicators," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 10(2), pages 365-391.
    3. Guoliang Lyu & Ganwei Shi, 2019. "On an approach to boosting a journal’s citation potential," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 120(3), pages 1387-1409, September.
    4. Yanhui Song & Feng Ma & Siluo Yang, 2015. "Comparative study on the obsolescence of humanities and social sciences in China: under the new situation of web," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 102(1), pages 365-388, January.
    5. 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).
    6. Lutz Bornmann & Adam Y. Ye & Fred Y. Ye, 2018. "Identifying “hot papers” and papers with “delayed recognition” in large-scale datasets by using dynamically normalized citation impact scores," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 116(2), pages 655-674, August.
    7. Gordana Budimir & Sophia Rahimeh & Sameh Tamimi & Primož Južnič, 2021. "Comparison of self-citation patterns in WoS and Scopus databases based on national scientific production in Slovenia (1996–2020)," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(3), pages 2249-2267, March.
    8. Tahamtan, Iman & Bornmann, Lutz, 2018. "Core elements in the process of citing publications: Conceptual overview of the literature," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 12(1), pages 203-216.
    9. Keshra Sangwal, 2012. "Application of progressive nucleation mechanism for the citation behavior of individual papers of different authors," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 92(3), pages 643-655, September.
    10. Onodera, Natsuo, 2016. "Properties of an index of citation durability of an article," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 10(4), pages 981-1004.
    11. Pech, Gerson & Delgado, Catarina, 2021. "Screening the most highly cited papers in longitudinal bibliometric studies and systematic literature reviews of a research field or journal: Widespread used metrics vs a percentile citation-based app," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 15(3).
    12. Hui Fang, 2020. "Investigating the journal impact along the columns and rows of the publication-citation matrix," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 125(3), pages 2265-2282, December.
    13. Lars Herberholz & Berthold U. Wigger, 2020. "Efficiency of European Universities: A Comparison of Peers," CESifo Working Paper Series 8044, CESifo.
    14. Marcel Clermont & Johanna Krolak & Dirk Tunger, 2021. "Does the citation period have any effect on the informative value of selected citation indicators in research evaluations?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(2), pages 1019-1047, February.
    15. Sangwal, Keshra, 2015. "On the growth dynamics of citations of articles by some Nobel Prize winners," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 9(3), pages 466-476.
    16. Iman Tahamtan & Askar Safipour Afshar & Khadijeh Ahamdzadeh, 2016. "Factors affecting number of citations: a comprehensive review of the literature," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 107(3), pages 1195-1225, June.
    17. Shengzhi Huang & Jiajia Qian & Yong Huang & Wei Lu & Yi Bu & Jinqing Yang & Qikai Cheng, 2022. "Disclosing the relationship between citation structure and future impact of a publication," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 73(7), pages 1025-1042, July.
    18. Hou, Jianhua & Yang, Xiucai, 2020. "Social media-based sleeping beauties: Defining, identifying and features," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 14(2).
    19. Raminta Pranckutė, 2021. "Web of Science (WoS) and Scopus: The Titans of Bibliographic Information in Today’s Academic World," Publications, MDPI, vol. 9(1), pages 1-59, March.
    20. Lin Zhang & Wolfgang Glänzel, 2017. "A citation-based cross-disciplinary study on literature ageing: part II—diachronous aspects," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 111(3), pages 1559-1572, June.

    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:spr:scient:v:127:y:2022:i:8:d:10.1007_s11192-022-04437-z. 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: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    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.