An analysis of citations in scientific and patent...

SCIENTIFIC SOLUTIONS

Simon M Pratt & Robert A Stembridge

An analysis of citations in scientific and patent literature to historicalresearch from the first half of the 20th century and the relationship tothe accessibility of these works through electronic archives

Copyright 2006 ThomsonSlide 2


• The Web of Science and previous versions of the Science CitationIndex (SCI, SciSearch) have long been considered the standard forbibliometrics and the analysis of citations for research evaluation

• The introduction of a new archive, called the Century of Science, hasextended the retrospective coverage of the Web of Science for theperiod 1900 to 1944.

• This has made it possible to comprehensively analyze the citations tohistoric works of the early part of the 20th century, a so called goldenera for scientific discovery, especially in the field of theoreticalchemistry and physics.

• There are several very highly cited works in this period, and many ofthese are being more heavily cited today than at any time in theirhistory.



• The most obvious example of this phenomenom is the works of AlbertEinstein.

• As can be seen by this diagram showing citations to Einstein’s 1905paper on the Special Theory of relativity, the number of citations peryear has increased dramatically in the last 10 years or so.

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• This trend is a direct contradiction to the expected trend for the journalthat this article was published in, Annalen Der Physik. A comparisonwith the citation trend for all articles published in the same journalbetween 1900 and 1904 shows this clearly.

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• There are several logical explanations for this trend such as:– Research in that particular field has not yet reached a satisfying

conclusion, and the research is still valid in the modern era– The theories discussed in the article are so revolutionary that it takes

sometime before they can be understood and utilized by the largerresearch community

– Historical reasons; in this case 2005 was the 100 year anniversary of thepublication of the article and the 50 year anniversary of Einstein's death

– Increased visibility and accessibility to Einstein’s work has led toresearchers re-discovering long forgotten works

• We believe that all of these are contributing factors to the increasingrate of citations.



• Not all articles follow the same trend.

• We can see a good example of this when we compare the 5 mostlyhighly cited articles in the Century of Science

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Fiske CHLineweaver, HNelson, NBrunauer, SMoller, C



• The first 3 articles, all ofwhich have decliningcitation rates, are concernedwith the determination ofphysical constants

• However the last 2 articlesare more interesting.They show and increase in citations in the last 10 years that farexceeds their historic citation rates. A quick inspection of their titlesshows that they would appear to be relevant to current research.

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1926 1936 1946 1956 1966 1976 1986 1996 2006

Fiske CHLineweaver, HNelson, NBrunauer, SMoller, C

Note on an approximation treatment for many-electron systemsMoller, C; Plesset, MS

Adsorption of gases in multimolecular layersBrunauer, S; Emmett, PH; Teller, E



• The Stephen Brunauer, Paul Hugh Emmett and Edward Teller articleoutlines the BET theory of gas absorption which is commonly used bymany researchers today.

• The article also outlines amethod to calculate thesurface area of solids such aspowders or micro particles.

• There are many applications forthis research, such as nano-technology, pollution control andcatalysis.

• By limiting the 6,700 citing articles to just those published in 2005-2006(618 articles), we can further analyze the results to find out how thisarticle is being cited now.

050100150200250300350400

192619331940194719541961196819751982198919962003



Citing Institutes

• The citing articles are very international in scope, signifying that thisarticle is very well known throughout the scientific community, as wouldbe expected for an article of this age

0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14

CNR, ItalyDELFT UNIV TECHNOL, Netherlands

KOREA ADV INST SCI & TECHNOL, South KoreaMARIE CURIE SKLODOWSKA UNIV, Poland

NATL ACAD SCI UKRAINE, UkraineOAK RIDGE NATL LAB, USA

TOKYO INST TECHNOL, JapanUFRGS, Brazil

UNIV BOLOGNA, ItalyCSIC, Spain

TIANJIN UNIV, Peoples R ChinaUNIV EXTREMADURA, Spain

UNIV MONTPELLIER 2, FranceKOREA RES INST CHEM TECHNOL, South Korea

CNRS, France



Citing Subject Categories

• Nothing surprising here; these are the fields that you would expect for anarticle dealing with gas absorption and surface area of micro particles

• Note the absence of History & Philosophy of Science, signifying that this articleis not being cited because of its historic significance (different to Einstein)

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NANOSCIENCE & NANOTECHNOLOGY

CHEMISTRY, MULTIDISCIPLINARY

GEOCHEMISTRY & GEOPHYSICS

PHYSICS, APPLIED

CHEMISTRY, APPLIED

ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES

ENGINEERING, CHEMICAL

MATERIALS SCIENCE, MULTIDISCIPLINARY

CHEMISTRY, PHYSICAL



Citing Journals

• Again there are no surprises here which further supports the idea that citationsto this article are not any kind of anomaly, or that it is being cited for reasonsother than the impact of this article on current research

0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35

APPLIED SURFACE SCIENCEINDUSTRIAL & ENGINEERING CHEMISTRY RES

CARBONJOURNAL OF HAZARDOUS MATERIALS

APPLIED CATALYSIS A-GENERALCOLLOIDS AND SURFACES A-PHYSICOCHEMENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

JOURNAL OF FOOD ENGINEERINGCHEMISTRY OF MATERIALS

JOURNAL OF MATERIALS CHEMISTRYGEOCHIMICA ET COSMOCHIMICA ACTA

LANGMUIRJOURNAL OF PHYSICAL CHEMISTRY B

MICROPOROUS AND MESOPOROUS MATERIALSJOURNAL OF COLLOID AND INTERFACE SCIENCE



• By looking at 22 of the most recent citing articles, and studying thecontext of the citations it can be seen that there are 3 generalvariations on the context of the citation.

– “Historical Reference” - e.g. “The BET model extends the Langmuirmodel” these are often cited in the introduction

– “Use of Method” - e.g. “Surface areas were estimated according to theBET model”

– “General reference” : referring to an element of the original article andbuilding upon that work

Of the 22 citing articles that were studied:– Historical Reference 14%– Use of Method 68%– General Reference 18%



Survey

• We conducted a short survey of researchers who cited the articlewithin the last year.

• Sent 200 e-mails, and received 72 replies (much higher than expected)

• The respondents were very international with replies from allgeographic regions including some unexpected places such asMorocco

• Respondents were primarily academics, but several from governmentand corporate research too



Question 1

• Where did you first hear about the article“Adsorption of gases in multimolecular layers”

a. Through a colleagueb. I have always known about this article /

It is so long ago that I forgetc. From a web searchd. From a bibliographic databasee. From a reference in another article or bookf. Other (please specify in your answer)

Of those that said “Other” all of them reported that they had first heardof this article as part of an academic course

Interesting Quote “Actually, I read about it when I was a graduatestudent, in the 1950s”

Results

– 21%– 22%

– 1%– 1%– 50%– 4%



Question 2

• How did you then locate a copyof the full text of the article?

a. From an electronic full text archiveb. From the print copy of the journal at my libraryc. From a colleagued. Through the internete. Other (please specify in your answer)

Of those that said “Other” most had read translations of the articleavailable in local language books

Interesting quote “for this article the full text was not retrieved. Itsimply is used to report the method used by the software of oursurface area analysis instrument.”

Results

– 15%– 51%– 19%– 4%– 10%



Question 3

• Aside from the historical perspective of this article,how relevant is it to your research now?

a. very relevantb. Somewhat relevantc. not relevant, only of historical interest

Clearly this historic research published in 1938 is still relevant toresearch today

Interesting quote “The BET method is still used to analyze adsorptionisotherms but is being replaced (somewhat) by DFT methods”

Results

– 54%– 32%– 14%



Analysis of papers citing patents published in 1900

• Later published papers citing patents published in 1900 were identifiedand analyzed by publication year

• No clear trend is observable

• Patents published in 1900 continue to be cited to the present day

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Citing subject categories

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Materials Science, CeramicsMaterials Science, MultidisciplinaryBiochemistry & Molecular Biology

Imaging Science & Photographic TechnologyMultidisciplinary Sciences

ElectrochemistryEngineering, Chemical

Polymer ScienceChemistry, Analytical

Engineering, Electrical & Electronic

Metallurgy & Metallurgical EngineeringChemistry, OrganicChemistry, PhysicalChemistry, Applied

Chemistry, Multidisciplinary



Citing journals

0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16

BULLETIN DE LA SOCIETE CHIMIQUE DE FRANCE

JOURNAL OF INDUSTRIAL AND ENGINEERINGCHEMISTRY-US

PHOTOGRAPHIC SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING

USPEKHI KHIMII

BERICHTE DER DEUTSCHEN CHEMISCHENGESELLSCHAFT

JOURNAL OF ORGANIC CHEMISTRY

PROCEEDINGS OF THE IEEE

ZEITSCHRIFT FUR ELEKTROCHEMIE

CHEMICAL REVIEWS

JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN CERAMIC SOCIETY

INDUSTRIAL AND ENGINEERING CHEMISTRY



Example: 2005 published paper citing a 1900 patent







Patents citing papers published pre-1950; an example



Conclusions• Some classic historic research is increasingly heavily cited• Analysis of the citing material suggests that the citations to the work are

genuine and are not any kind of anomaly or historical study• A survey of citing authors shows that

– The majority found this article from a cited reference of bibliography of anotherwork, Web Searching does not seem to have played a major role in the awarenessof this article.

– The majority of researchers still access the full text of this article via the printjournal, this may reflect a lack of access to the electronic copy

– The majority of researchers still believe that this work is relevant to their research

• A citation analysis of the relationship between patents and articles shows thathistoric patents are also still being cited, but there is no clear evidence of anincreasing citation rate

• Citations from patents to articles, and from articles to patents can revealvaluable information and should not be ignored.

• Retrospective coverage of both journals and patents is valuable to currentresearch



Thank you!

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