Growth dynamics of citations of cumulative papers of individual authors according to progressive nucleation mechanism: Concept of citation acceleration

  • Authors:

  • Keshra Sangwal

  • Affiliations:

  • Department of Applied Physics, Lublin University of Technology, ul. Nadbystrzycka 38, 20-618 Lublin, Poland

  • Venue:
  • Information Processing and Management: an International Journal
  • Year:
  • 2013

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Abstract

Using data generated by progressive nucleation mechanism on the cumulative fraction of citations of individual papers published successively by a hypothetical author, an expression for the time dependence of the cumulative number L"s"u"m(t) of citations of progressively published papers is proposed. It was found that, for all nonzero values of constant publication rate @DN, the cumulative citations L"s"u"m(t) of the cumulative N papers published by an author in his/her entire publication career spanning over T years may be represented in distinct regions: (1) in the region 0@Q"0, L"s"u"m(t) approaches a constant L"s"u"m(max) at T. In the former region, the time dependence of L"s"u"m(t) of an author is associated with three parameters, viz. the citability parameter @l"0, the publication rate @DN and his/her publication career t. Based on the predicted dependence of L"s"u"m(t) on t, a useful scientometric age-independent measure, defined as citation acceleration a=L"s"u"m(t)/t^2, is suggested to analyze and compare the scientific activities of different authors. Confrontation of the time dependence of cumulative number L"s"u"m(t) of citations of papers with the theoretical equation reveals one or more citation periods during the publication careers of different authors.