ELFT HÍRADÓ

[LORINCZ Andras <lorincz AT inf.elte.hu>]

*Read before you cite!*

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./_

http://arxiv.org/ftp/cond-mat/papers/0212/0212043.pdf

*Copied citations create renowned papers?*

Recently we discovered that the majority of scientific citations are 
copied from the lists of references used in other papers. Here we show 
that a model,
in which a scientist picks three random papers, cites them, and also 
copies a quarter of their references accounts quantitatively for 
empirically observed citation distribution. Simple mathematical 
probability, not genius, can explain why some papers are cited a lot more 
than the other.

http://arxiv.org/ftp/cond-mat/papers/0305/0305150.pdf

/"Of course, in some spiritual sense, great scientists do exist. It is 
just that even if they would not exist, citation data would look the 
same."/