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Notes
The skew in citations was particularly pronounced in ASR articles published in 1983. The skewness of citations will vary with the popularity of the top-cited paper. For example, in 1970, with no paper achieving 500 citations, the top paper received only 10.8% of citations.
Bott and Hargens (1991) show that self-citations account for only a small fraction of cumulative citations.
Two points need to be made about these data. First, we included “near miss” citations that were not completely accurate in terms of page numbers, author initials and other identifying information. For example, Robert J. Samson’s article “Crime and Deviance over the Life Course” was cited correctly 120 times. There were two additional references to “R. Sampon” and three other references to “R. J. Sampson” which did not precisely match the page numbers of the published paper. We credited this article with 125 citations. A second item to note is that these totals continue to increase over time as additional citations accumulate. More than half of citations to ASR articles occur more than 10 years after an article is published. Thus, anyone seeking to replicate this analysis will not reproduce these precise figures, although the main features of these patterns will be evident.
The figure of 3.5 is the author’s calculation of the citation impact for ASR in 1991.
This analysis considers papers published before 1956 separately, because it is not possible to identify the number of citations received in the years immediately following publication. This analysis also excludes the “near misses” discussed in footnote 3, and thus the sum of all of the decades may not match the total cumulative citations.
Another type of impact not considered here is the indirect influence a paper can have via the papers it influenced. Thus, the work of Blau and Duncan inspired that of Hauser and Featherman, Hout, Grusky and others. In other words, a full accounting of the influence of Blau and Duncan would count not only the citations to their work but the citations to the work of those who followed their lead directly. Thus, in principle one could map a chain of influence representing a broader sense of impact than is reflected in the counts examined here.
Cozzens (1985) examines whether the content of citations to a given article change over time. She reports change in the content of citations to a paper in neuropharmacology from a more specific report on the study and its techniques to more a general report on its main finding, but reports no change in the one social-science paper she studied. However, perhaps the 13-year period Cozzens considered was too short to capture the full trajectory of this transformation. Another possibility is that the one article she studied, while influential, did not achieve the kind of iconic status that would lead to its use as part of the “orienting literature.” (The sociological article Cozzens examined, by Ben David and Collins, which was published in ASR in 1966 [see Table 5]).
Studies that compare citations of journal articles and books include Stack (1994) and Bott and Hargens (1991). The issue of defining the appropriate pool of books is of concern in both studies. Because the present analysis focuses on the volume or number of highly cited books rather than the rate or chances of obtaining high citations, the problem of large numbers of obscure books is less relevant for these purposes.
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The research assistance of Arielle Kuperberg and Kristin Turney is greatly appreciated.
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Jacobs, J.A. Further Reflections on ASR’s Greatest Hits. Am Soc 38, 99–131 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12108-007-9003-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12108-007-9003-0