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Time series citation data: the Nobel Prize in economics

Scientometrics volume 98, pages 185–196 (2014)Cite this article

Abstract

Citation time series are not easy to compile from the most popular databases. The Data for Research service of the JSTOR journal database is a large and high-quality sample of citations, weighted towards humanities and social sciences. It provides time series citation data over many decades, back to the origins of the constituent journals. The citation trajectories of Nobel Prize winners in economics are analyzed here from 1930 to 2005. They are described mathematically by means of the Bass model of the diffusion of innovations. A bell-shaped curve provides a good fit with most prize winner citation trajectories, and suggests that economic knowledge follows the typical innovation cycle of adoption, peak, and decline within scholarly careers and shortly afterwards. Several variant trajectories are described.

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Notes

  1. See also Blair et al. (1986), Kelly and Bruestle (2010), Medoff (1989, 1996) for further examples of creative citation counting in economics.

  2. An inspection of publication trends for each of JSTOR’s relevant subject areas suggests that all fields followed a similar growth trend during our period; it is unlikely that deflating by the total number of articles distorted the data in any particular direction.

  3. As one of them told us.

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Acknowledgements

This project was supported by a grant from the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET). Sundas Ali assisted ably in processing the data.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Winton Institute for Monetary History, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom

    Samuel Bjork

  2. All Souls College, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom

    Avner Offer

  3. Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden

    Gabriel Söderberg

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  1. Samuel Bjork
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  2. Avner Offer
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  3. Gabriel Söderberg
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Correspondence to Avner Offer.

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Bjork, S., Offer, A. & Söderberg, G. Time series citation data: the Nobel Prize in economics. Scientometrics 98, 185–196 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-013-0989-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-013-0989-5

Keywords

  • Time series
  • Bibliometrics
  • Citation analysis
  • Economics
  • Nobel Prize