Discussion of “Co-citation and Co-authorship Networks of Statisticians”

Abstract

We thank the authors for their new contribution to a high quality data set and interesting findings from the modeling and analysis of the co-citation and co-authorship networks of statisticians. Leveraging this data set, there are lots of additional questions that might be answered, and analyses done. Network motif analysis is one such. In this discussion, we construct temporal citation networks among statisticians using the publication data provided in the paper, and focus on analyzing the frequency and distribution of temporal motifs in such dynamic networks. This analysis provides initial insights into the temporal patterns of citing behaviors among authors of various statistics journals from 1975 to 2015.