Citations and Citation Networks; Bibliometrics

Last update: 22 Aug 2025 09:25
First version: 29 August 2015

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One strong suspicion I have is that as official-dom has paid more and more attention to citations (counts, various indices, etc.), they have become systematically worse as a guide to what is actually important in the scientific literature. I don't know how we could begin to test that, though, without a quite independent way of assessing quality.

See also:
• Analysis of Network Data
• Complex Networks
• Joint Modeling of Texts and Networks
• Social Networks
• Sociology of Science

Recommended:
• Robert Adler, John Ewing, Peter Taylor, "Citation Statistics", Statistical Science 24 (2009): 1--14, arxiv:0910.3529 [With commentary and replies. These are techniques and measures which came out of sociology of science, and have become important tools of policy. "There is a belief that citation statistics are inherently more accurate because they substitute simple numbers for complex judgments, and hence overcome the possible subjectivity of peer review. But this belief is unfounded."]
• Liam Kofi Bright, "Citational Justice", The Sooty Empiric 23 November 2021
• Derek J. de Solla Price
  • Little Science, Big Science
  • "Networks of Scientific Papers", Science 149 (1965): 510--515
  • "A General Theory of Bibliometric and Other Cumulative Advantage Processes", Journal of the American Society for Information Science 27 (1976): 292--306
• Mikhail V. Simkin and V. P. Roychowdhury
  • "Read before you cite!" cond-mat/0212043
  • "Copied citations create renowned papers?" cond-mat/0305150
  • "A mathematical theory of citing", physics/0504094

To read:
• Sven Bilke and C. Peterson, "Topological Properties of Citation and Metabolic Networks", cond-mat/0103361
• Michael Golosovsky and Sorin Solomon, "Stochastic Dynamical Model of a Growing Citation Network Based on a Self-Exciting Point Process", Physical Review Letters 109 (2012): 098701
• Yves Gingras, Bibliometrics and Research Evaluation: Uses and Abuses
• Vincent Holst, Andres Algaba, Floriano Tori, Sylvia Wenmackers, Vincent Ginis, "Dataset Artefacts are the Hidden Drivers of the Declining Disruptiveness in Science", arxiv:2402.14583 [I need to read this carefully, but it looked fairly convincing on a quick skim, in which case: ouch...]
• Adam B. Jaffe and Manuel Trajtenberg, Patents, Citations, and Innovations: A Window on the Knowledge Economy
• Victor V. Kryssanov, Evgeny L. Kuleshov, Frank J. Rinaldo, and Hitoshi Ogawa, "We cite as we communicate: A communication model for the citation process", cs.DL/0703115
• Vincent Lariviere, Yves Gingras, "The impact factor's Matthew effect: a natural experiment in bibliometrics", arxiv:0908.3177
• Uri Shwed and Peter S. Bearman, "The Temporal Structure of Scientific Consensus Formation", American Sociological Review 75 (2010): 817--840
• Alexei Vazquez, "Statistics of citation networks," cond-mat/0105031