[ArXiv] The Importance of Being First: Position Dependent Citation Rates on arXiv:astro-ph

hlee — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 03:55:35 +0000

The full article is found from [arXiv/astro-ph:0712.1037]. According to J. P. Dietrich, the positional citation effect (PCE) is significant so that preprints appeared at the top of daily lists tend to be more cited than other preprints. Although the study is not statistically rigorous to confirm that up to 6th article on the list is more likely cited, the number are drastically large enough to make people believe the author’s hypothesis.

Personally, this issue has been the biggest obstacle when the weekly [arXiv] is posted. Reading 40-60 abstracts daily always met time constraints. Sometimes, I take a tactic of reading titles and abstracts from the bottom not to skip bottom ones but it’s quite challenging to read abstracts without any break, then I lost my cutoff to continue my backward reading. After many months, actually, I thought about stop reviewing all abstracts from [astro-ph] but get one relevant preprint from the top a few times a month. Now, I felt like someone hit me behind.

As the author suggested, it’ll be better that [astro-ph] is subcategorized; for example, theory, observation, and data analysis; planets, stars, and extended sources (distance based subcategorizing would be needed); multi-wavelengths, gamma-ray, X-ray, UV, optical, IR, and radio; and other classes of subcategories. Like other fields, cross listing will help if the topic cross different subcategories.

I’m not sure how often people feel my [arXiv] is useful. Obviously it’s shorter than astro-ph but the subject is limited to (personally thought) astrostatistics. Giving 5-15 papers may be too many to read. Instead of [arXiv], reviews of short papers or tutorial type papers from statistical journals for astronomers are better suited. Please, send me your feedbacks.

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[ArXiv] The Importance of Being First: Position Dependent Citation Rates on arXiv:astro-ph