On the growth dynamics of citations of articles by some Nobel Prize winners

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.