English

Read before you cite!

Disordered Systems and Neural Networks 2007-05-23 v1 Statistical Mechanics Physics and Society

Abstract

We report a method of estimating what percentage of people who cited a paper had actually read it. The method is based on a stochastic modeling of the citation process that explains empirical studies of misprint distributions in citations (which we show follows a Zipf law). Our estimate is only about 20% of citers read the original.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.cond-mat/0212043,
  title  = {Read before you cite!},
  author = {M. V. Simkin and V. P. Roychowdhury},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/0212043},
  year   = {2007}
}