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Handful of papers dominates citation

Nature volume 491, page 40 (2012)Cite this article

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The number of citations acquired by a paper is a proxy of its impact. We found that of all papers published in five leading journals in 1990, the most highly cited 1% in each collected around 17% of citations in 2010 (see 'The 1% effect'; data from Thomson Reuters Science Citation Index).

Changes over time in the citation share of the top 1% are evidence of endogenous shifts in underlying processes. These trends are particularly pronounced for citations of older papers. For example, the top 1% of 1990 papers collected only about 5% of citations in 1991.

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  1. Northeastern University, Boston, Massachusetts, USA

    Albert-László Barabási, Chaoming Song & Dashun Wang

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  1. Albert-László Barabási
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  2. Chaoming Song
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  3. Dashun Wang
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Correspondence to Albert-László Barabási.

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Barabási, AL., Song, C. & Wang, D. Handful of papers dominates citation. Nature 491, 40 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/491040a

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