Citation Analysis and Report: “Star Wars Forceful Influence on Scholarly Research”

A new and very timely analysis from the Web of Science team at Thomson Reuters.
From the Report:

For nearly four decades, the six original films, and their ongoing multimedia spinoffs and inexhaustible merchandising, have cultivated varying levels of obsession in fans of all ages. Meanwhile, not surprisingly, the pop-cultural juggernaut that is Star Wars, and what it tells us about humankind’s abiding need for heroes and for the shared narrative of mythology and religion (not to mention how that need can be commercially exploited) has also attracted the attention of the scholarly community.
To mark the release of “Episode VII,” we turn to a selection of academic research devoted to the worlds of Star Wars.
A search of the Thomson Reuters Web of Science database and its indexed store of 12,000-plus scientific and scholarly journals produced nearly 1,000 scholarly papers published since the first film’s 1977 debut. Discounting the Ronald Reagan-era glut of 1980s reports invoking the nickname “Star Wars,” in reference to the US space-based Strategic Defense Initiative anti-missile system and its attendant political flap, still leaves scores of reports examining the imaginary film universe.

Access the Top 10 Most-Cited Papers List, Read Complete Report/Analysis
See Also: Citation Analysis: The Top 10 Most Cited Scholarly Papers About The Beatles (February 11, 2014)

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