Alternative thoughts on uncitedness

Burrell, Quentin L.

doi:10.1002/asi.22607

Cited by 12 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 4 publications

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“…Of the papers included in WoS, 13.5 ± 6.2% of those (co)authored by Fields medalists and 13.7 ± 6.6% of those (co)authored by Nobel Prize laureates were uncited. Because the search corroborated the previously published results (Egghe et al., ), in agreement with the stochastic publication/citation model suggested by Burrell (, ), I next focused on the variables with the potential to influence the observed ratio.…”

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 69%

“…Although this is an interesting hypothesis, and although the more recent authors suggested even two models explaining the pattern of uncitedness [Lotkaian model by Egghe et al. (), and stochastic model by Burrell ()], none of the above researchers verified the characteristics of papers being uncited. Egghe et al.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 94%

“…The outcomes of Egghe et al. () have been discussed and further broadened by Q. L. Burrell (), who suggested an alternative explanation of the reported observations. Among the crucial findings was the detection of a vast amount of uncited articles produced by the Nobel Prize laureates (in physics, chemistry, and physiology or medicine) and Fields medalists (mathematicians).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 89%

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Supposedly uncited articles of Nobel laureates and Fields medalists can be prevalently attributed to the errors of omission and commission

Heneberg

2013

J Am Soc Inf Sci Tec

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Several independent authors reported a high share of uncited publications, which include those produced by top scientists. This share was repeatedly reported to exceed 10% of the total papers produced, without any explanation of this phenomenon and the lack of difference in uncitedness between average and successful researchers. In this report, we analyze the uncitedness among two independent groups of highly visible scientists (mathematicians represented by Fields medalists, and researchers in physiology or medicine represented by Nobel Prize laureates in the respective field). Analysis of both groups led to the identical conclusion: over 90% of the uncited database records of highly visible scientists can be explained by the inclusion of editorial materials progress reports presented at international meetings (meeting abstracts), discussion items (letters to the editor, discussion), personalia (biographic items), and by errors of omission and commission of the Web of Science (WoS) database and of the citing documents. Only a marginal amount of original articles and reviews were found to be uncited (0.9 and 0.3%, respectively), which is in strong contrast with the previously reported data, which never addressed the document types among the uncited records.

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Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 69%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 94%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 89%

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Supposedly uncited articles of Nobel laureates and Fields medalists can be prevalently attributed to the errors of omission and commission

Heneberg

2013

J Am Soc Inf Sci Tec

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“…Continuing their long association with so‐called Lotkaian informetrics, in Egghe and Rousseau ) they assume a continuous (approximate) form for the distribution of citations over productive sources which, in the standard size‐frequency form is written

f_{1} (j) = \frac{C_{1}}{j^{α_{1}}}, j \geq 1

where α > 2 is referred to as the Lotka index. To compensate for the criticism of this model that it makes no mention of the uncited sources (see, e.g., Egghe, Guns, & Rousseau, , and Burrell, ), in Egghe and Rousseau (, ) we find the so‐called shifted Lotka function with size‐frequency form

f_{0} (j) = \frac{C_{0}}{{(j + 1)}^{α_{0}}}, j \geq 0

Remark Strictly speaking, (1) gives Lotka's law in the case where j takes positive integer values. For the continuous case (1) is the standard (Type I) Pareto distribution, after Pareto (, , ,).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 94%

Formulae for the h‐index: A lack of robustness in Lotkaian informetrics?

Burrell¹

2013

J Am Soc Inf Sci Tec

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In one of the first attempts at providing a mathematical framework for the Hirsch index, Egghe and Rousseau (2006) assumed the standard Lotka model for an author's citation distribution to derive a delightfully simple closed formula for his/her h-index. More recently, the same authors (Egghe & Rousseau, 2012b) have presented a new (implicit) formula based on the so-called shifted Lotka function to allow for the objection that the original model makes no allowance for papers receiving zero citations. Here it is shown, through a small empirical study, that the formulae actually give very similar results whether or not the uncited papers are included. However, and more important, it is found that they both seriously underestimate the true h-index, and we suggest that the reason for this is that this is a contextthe citation distribution of an author-in which straightforward Lotkaian informetrics is inappropriate. Indeed, the analysis suggests that even if we restrict attention to the upper tail of the citation distribution, a simple Lotka/ Pareto-like model can give misleading results.

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“…() revealed that the former tend to be “late heartbeats” (most citations were received in the second half of the sleeping period), whereas the latter tend to exhibit “early heartbeats” (most citations were received in the first half of a sleeping period). In addition, the number of never cited publications (“uncitedness”) is large, even if the authors are Nobel Laureates (Burrell, ; Egghe, Guns, & Rousseau, ; Heneberg, ). The citation boost required in the new criteria does not necessarily “abruptly” attract a lot of attention, as indicated by van Raan ().…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sleeping beauties in genius work: When were they awakened?

Shi

2015

Asso for Info Science & Tech

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Genius work," proposed by Avramescu, refers to scientific articles whose citations grow exponentially in an extended period, for example, over 50 years. Such articles were defined as "sleeping beauties" by van Raan, who quantitatively studied the phenomenon of delayed recognition. However, the criteria adopted by van Raan at times are not applicable and may confer recognition prematurely. To revise such deficiencies, this paper proposes two new criteria, which are applicable (but not limited) to exponential citation curves. We searched for genius work among articles of Nobel Prize laureates during the period of 1901-2012 on the Web of Science, finding 25 articles of genius work out of 21,438 papers including 10 (by van Raan's criteria) sleeping beauties and 15 nonsleeping-beauties. By our new criteria, two findings were obtained through empirical analysis: (a) the awakening periods for genius work depend on the increase rate b in the exponential function, and (b) lower b leads to a longer sleeping period.

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Alternative thoughts on uncitedness

Cited by 12 publications

References 4 publications

Supposedly uncited articles of Nobel laureates and Fields medalists can be prevalently attributed to the errors of omission and commission

Supposedly uncited articles of Nobel laureates and Fields medalists can be prevalently attributed to the errors of omission and commission

Formulae for the h‐index: A lack of robustness in Lotkaian informetrics?

Sleeping beauties in genius work: When were they awakened?

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