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A citation-based cross-disciplinary study on literature aging: part I—the synchronous approach

Author

Listed:
  • Lin Zhang

    (North China University of Water Resources and Electric Power
    KU Leuven)

  • Wolfgang Glänzel

    (KU Leuven
    Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences)

Abstract

We provide a view of the literature aging features in the sciences and social sciences, at different aggregation levels, of major fields, subfields, journals and individual papers and from different perspectives. Against to the wide belief that scientific literature may become more rapidly obsolete, we found that, in general, the share of more recent references were distinctly lower in 2014 than that in 1992, which holds for all aggregation levels. As exceptions, the subfields related to Chemistry and the subfield energy and fuels, have shown a clear trend to cite more recent literature than older articles. Particle and nuclear physics and astronomy and astrophysics, the two subfields which strongly rely on e-print archives, have shown a ‘polarization’ tendency of reference distribution. Furthermore, we stress that it is very important to measure the Price Index at the paper level to account for differences between the documents published in the same journals and (sub-)fields.

Suggested Citation

  • 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.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:scient:v:111:y:2017:i:3:d:10.1007_s11192-017-2289-y
    DOI: 10.1007/s11192-017-2289-y
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Pedro Albarrán & Javier Ruiz‐Castillo, 2011. "References made and citations received by scientific articles," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 62(1), pages 40-49, January.
    2. Anthony F. J. van Raan, 2000. "On Growth, Ageing, and Fractal Differentiation of Science," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 47(2), pages 347-362, February.
    3. M. V. Simkin & V. P. Roychowdhury, 2005. "Stochastic modeling of citation slips," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 62(3), pages 367-384, March.
    4. Lin Zhang & Ronald Rousseau & Wolfgang Glänzel, 2016. "Diversity of references as an indicator of the interdisciplinarity of journals: Taking similarity between subject fields into account," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 67(5), pages 1257-1265, May.
    5. Wolfgang Glänzel & András Schubert, 2003. "A new classification scheme of science fields and subfields designed for scientometric evaluation purposes," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 56(3), pages 357-367, March.
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    Citations

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    Cited by:

    1. 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.
    2. Wang, Zhiqi & Chen, Yue & Glänzel, Wolfgang, 2020. "Preprints as accelerator of scholarly communication: An empirical analysis in Mathematics," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 14(4).
    3. 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.
    4. Anna Małgorzata Kamińska & Łukasz Opaliński & Łukasz Wyciślik, 2024. "The Landscapes of Sustainability in Library and Information Science: Diachronous Citation Perspective," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 16(21), pages 1-28, November.
    5. Pei-Shan Chi & Wolfgang Glänzel, 2022. "An article-based cross-disciplinary study of reference literature for indicator improvement," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(12), pages 7077-7089, December.
    6. 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.
    7. 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.

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