Dirk Helbing and Santo Fortunato

Are sudden bursts in the frequency of citations of a scientist's work a byproduct of herding behavior, scientific merit, or a little of both?

SFI External Professor Dirk Helbing of ETH Zurich and collaborators, in a study published May 4 in PLoS One, studied citation frequencies for past papers by future Nobel laureates and found that some landmark papers give their authors a sudden boost in citation rate -- both for the landmark paper itself and the scientist's earlier work, even if the earlier research was unrelated.

The study team suggests a couple of dynamics at work: a rich-get-richer effect whereby other scientists glom on to a scientist's rapidly increasing credibility by citing him or her in their own work, and a recognition that a scientist's burgeoning reputation could be a signal of unnoticed genius.

The study also shows that innovation in science follows the laws of a self-organized critical system. Helbing compares this to a sand pile, on top of which more and more sand is poured. The sand doesn’t flow down the sides evenly; instead, there are avalanches of varying sizes. They represent the citation cascades that can be triggered by scientific publications. The small ones are frequent and typical for steady scientific progress – like pieces in the mosaic of knowledge; the scarce large avalanches, however, represent scientific breakthroughs or even revolutions.

Read the paper in PLoS One (May 4, 2011)

Read the article in Nature (May 6, 2011)

Read the ETH news release (May 5, 2011)