Abstract
Abstract The citation behavior of Nobel Prize winning articles in physics published by selected Chinese Americans, discussed before (Liu, Y. X. & Rousseau, R. (2014). Journal of American Society for Information Science and Technology, 65(2) , 281–289), is analyzed using a unified Avrami–Weibull equation based on concepts of formation of citation nuclei instantaneously and progressively similar to the concepts involved in the theories of overall crystallization of solid phase from a closed liquid system of fixed volume. It was found that: (1) initial concave and convex curvatures of plots of cumulative citations L ( t ) of individual articles against citation time t are associated with the generation of citations by instantaneous and progressive citation nucleation, respectively, (2) the time constant Θ and exponent q in the unified relation are indicators that distinguish between the L ( t ) plots with initial concave and convex curvatures for individual articles, (3) in cases of L ( t ) plots with initial convex curvature, the data may be described by the unified relation with q > 1 (i.e. when nuclei are formed progressively) and/or by power-law relation, and (4) in some cases two citation regions of an L ( t ) plots follow different nucleation mechanisms or the same mechanism with different values of the parameters of its equation.
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