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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2018 May 13.
Published in final edited form as: Science. 2018 Mar 2;359(6379):eaao0185. doi: 10.1126/science.aao0185

Fig. 5. Universality in citation dynamics.

Fig. 5

(A) The citation distributions of papers published in the same discipline and year lie on the same curve for most disciplines, if the raw number of citations c of each paper is divided by the average number of citations c0 over all papers in that discipline and year. The dashed line is a lognormal fit. [Adapted from (69)] (B) Citation history of four papers published in Physical Review in 1964, selected for their distinct dynamics, displaying a “jump-decay” pattern (blue), experiencing a delayed peak (magenta), attracting a constant number of citations over time (green), or acquiring an increasing number of citations each year (red). (C) Citations of an individual paper are determined by three parameters: fitness λi, immediacy μi, and longevity σi. By rescaling the citation history of each paper in (B) by the appropriate (λ, μ, σ) parameters, the four papers collapse onto a single universal function, which is the same for all disciplines. [Adapted from (77)]