# Anomalous diffusion in the citation time series of scientific publications

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2106.10038 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.10038/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 18 Jun 2021.

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [A multiple k-means cluster ensemble framework for clustering citation trajectories](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.04949/) (2023)

## Abstract (arXiv)

We analyze the citation time-series of manuscripts in three different fields of science; physics, social science and technology. The evolution of the time-series of the yearly number of citations, namely the citation trajectories, diffuse anomalously, their variance scales with time propto t2H, where Hneq 1/2. We provide detailed analysis of the various factors that lead to the anomalous behavior: non-stationarity, long-ranged correlations and a fat-tailed increment distribution. The papers exhibit high degree of heterogeneity, across the various fields, as the statistics of the highest cited papers is fundamentally different from that of the lower ones. The citation data is shown to be highly correlated and non-stationary; as all the papers except the small percentage of them with high number of citations, die out in time.