Model predicts future citation rate for recently published journal articles

Nature : The number of citations a paper receives is a common measuring stick for evaluating the worth of the paper. Dashun Wang of the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center in New York and international collaborators have developed a model, based on data from the first five years after a paper was published, that accurately predicts how many citations it will receive in its lifetime. The model ignores the author, subject, and journal of publication. Instead it considers only three factors: The underlying appeal of the ideas; how quickly the paper gains its first citations; and the fact that over time, the number of new citations approaches zero. Wang and his colleagues tested the model using physics papers published in the 1960s. They found that 93.5% of the papers fit the predicted range of citations 25 years after publication. They found similar success over shorter durations using papers from the 1990s. However, many papers showed a wide range of uncertainty. The remaining 6.5% of papers were slow to receive their initial citations but then became significant more than 5 years after publication. Wang hopes to refine the model with the inclusion of other factors such as topic or location of publication.