Anomalous diffusion in the citation time series of scientific publications

We analyze the citation time-series of manuscripts in three different fields of science; physics, social science and technology. The evolution of the time-series of the yearly number of citations, namely the citation trajectories, diffuse anomalously, their variance scales with time proportional to t (2H ), where H not equal 1/2. We provide detailed analysis of the various factors that lead to the anomalous behavior: non-stationarity, long-ranged correlations and a fat-tailed increment distribution. The papers exhibit a high degree of heterogeneity across the various fields, as the statistics of the highest cited papers is fundamentally different from that of the lower ones. The citation data is shown to be highly correlated and non-stationary; as all the papers except the small percentage of them with high number of citations, die out in time.

Automated summary

The study analyzed the citation time-series of manuscripts in physics, social science, and technology, revealing that the citation trajectories exhibit anomalous diffusion and their variance scales with time proportionally. Factors such as non-stationarity, long-ranged correlations, and a fat-tailed increment distribution were found to lead to this anomalous behavior. The papers showed high heterogeneity across fields, with the statistics of highly cited papers being fundamentally different from lower ones, and the citation data was shown to be highly correlated and non-stationary, with most papers dying out in time except for a small percentage with high number of citations.