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November 4, 2014 by Gary Price

More Research From Google Scholar Team: “On the Shoulders of Giants: The Growing Impact of Older Articles”

November 4, 2014 by Gary Price

About one month ago we pointed to a new research paper by the co-founders of Google Scholar along with other other Googlers utilizing data from the Google Scholar database.
See: “Rise of the Rest: The Growing Impact of Non-Elite Journals”
Today, another research paper from this group is available online.

Title

On the Shoulders of Giants: The Growing Impact of Older Articles

Authors

Anurag Acharya
Alex Verstak
Helder Suzuki
Sean Henderson
Mikhail Iakhiaev
Cliff Chiung Yu Lin
Namit Shetty
Affiliation: Google Inc. (All Authors)

Source

via arXiv

Abstract

In this paper, we examine the evolution of the impact of older scholarly articles. We attempt to answer four questions. First, how often are older articles cited and how has this changed over time. Second, how does the impact of older articles vary across different research fields. Third, is the change in the impact of older articles accelerating or slowing down. Fourth, are these trends different for much older articles.
To answer these questions, we studied citations from articles published in 1990-2013. We computed the fraction of citations to older articles from articles published each year as the measure of impact. We considered articles that were published at least 10 years before the citing article as older articles. We computed these numbers for 261 subject categories and 9 broad areas of research. Finally, we repeated the computation for two other definitions of older articles, 15 years and older and 20 years and older.
There are three conclusions from our study.
First, the impact of older articles has grown substantially over 1990-2013. In 2013, 36% of citations were to articles that are at least 10 years old; this fraction has grown 28% since 1990. The fraction of older citations increased over 1990-2013 for 7 out of 9 broad areas and 231 out of 261 subject categories. Second, the increase over the second half (2002-2013) was double the increase in the first half (1990-2001).
Third, the trend of a growing impact of older articles also holds for even older articles. In 2013, 21% of citations were to articles >= 15 years old with an increase of 30% since 1990 and 13% of citations were to articles >= 20 years old with an increase of 36%.
Now that finding and reading relevant older articles is about as easy as finding and reading recently published articles, significant advances aren’t getting lost on the shelves and are influencing work worldwide for years after.

Direct to Full Text Research Paper (11 pages; PDF)

Filed under: Data Files, Journal Articles, News

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About Gary Price

Gary Price (gprice@gmail.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area. He earned his MLIS degree from Wayne State University in Detroit. Price has won several awards including the SLA Innovations in Technology Award and Alumnus of the Year from the Wayne St. University Library and Information Science Program. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com. Gary is also the co-founder of infoDJ an innovation research consultancy supporting corporate product and business model teams with just-in-time fact and insight finding.

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