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The Life Cycle of Scholarly Articles across Fields of Research

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  • Sebastian Galiani
  • Ramiro H. Gálvez

Abstract

Aggregate citation behavior plays a key role in scientific knowledge diffusion, as citations document the collective and cumulative nature of knowledge production. Additionally, citations are commonly taken as input for several influential evaluative metrics used to assess researchers’ performance. Nevertheless, little effort has been devoted to understanding and quantifying how article citations evolve over the years following an article’s publication and how these trends vary across fields of research. By collecting and analyzing a dataset consisting of more than five million citations to 59,707 research articles from 12 dissimilar fields of research, we quantify how citations evolve across fields of research as articles grow older. Analyzing raw citation data spanning different periods poses several methodological challenges; to tackle them, we employ quantile regression, a technique that makes it possible to control for citation inflation (the fact that citations have become more common nowadays) and to take into consideration the well-known asymmetry in the distribution of citations. We find that citations follow a life-cycle pattern. In the first years after publication, articles generally receive a small but growing number of citations until, eventually, they reach a peak from which they then decline. Importantly, the shape of these life cycles varies greatly from one field to the next. Given that several influential metrics restrict their input to a certain range in terms of the number of years since publication, these differences are by no means neutral and should be taken into account when evaluating researchers or their institutions.

Suggested Citation

  • Sebastian Galiani & Ramiro H. Gálvez, 2017. "The Life Cycle of Scholarly Articles across Fields of Research," NBER Working Papers 23447, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:23447
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    Cited by:

    1. María Victoria Anauati & Sebastian Galiani & Ramiro H. Gálvez, 2018. "Differences in citation patterns across journal tiers in economics," Documentos de Trabajo 16701, The Latin American and Caribbean Economic Association (LACEA).
    2. Andrei Dubovik & Clemens Fiedler & Alexei Parakhonyak, 2022. "Temporal Patterns in Economics Research," CPB Discussion Paper 440, CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis.
    3. Garret Christensen & Allan Dafoe & Edward Miguel & Don A Moore & Andrew K Rose, 2019. "A study of the impact of data sharing on article citations using journal policies as a natural experiment," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(12), pages 1-13, December.
    4. Syed Hasan & Robert Breunig, 2021. "Article length and citation outcomes," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(9), pages 7583-7608, September.
    5. Nguyen, Ai Linh & Liu, Wenyuan & Khor, Khiam Aik & Nanetti, Andrea & Cheong, Siew Ann, 2020. "The golden eras of graphene science and technology: Bibliographic evidences from journal and patent publications," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 14(4).
    6. Wood-Doughty, Alex & Bergstrom, Ted & Steigerwald, Douglas, 2017. "Do download reports reliably measure journal usage? Trusting the fox to count your Hens?," University of California at Santa Barbara, Economics Working Paper Series qt1f221007, Department of Economics, UC Santa Barbara.

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    • B0 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - General

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