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arXiv · 2006.03561

Quantifying the higher-order influence of scientific publications

Massimo Franceschet·Giovanni Colavizza
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Abstract

Citation impact is commonly assessed using direct, first-order citation relations. We consider here instead the indirect influence of publications on new publications via citations. We present a novel method to quantify the higher-order citation influence of publications, considering both direct, or first-order, and indirect, or higher-order citations. In particular, we are interested in higher-order citation influence at the level of disciplines. We apply this method to the whole Web of Science data at the level of disciplines. We find that a significant amount of influence -- 42% -- stems from higher-order citations. Furthermore, we show that higher-order citation influence is helpful to quantify and visualize citation flows among disciplines, and to assess their degree of interdisciplinarity.

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Massimo Franceschet, Giovanni Colavizza. 2020-06-05. Quantifying the higher-order influence of scientific publications. https://arxiv.org/abs/2006.03561

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