Abstract
I examine the citation patterns to a revolutionary scientific paper, Hess’ “History of Ocean Basins”, which played a significant role in the plate tectonics revolution in the geosciences. I test two predictions made by the geoscientist Menard (in Science: growth and change. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1971): (1) that the peak year of citations for Hess’ article will be 1968; and (2) that the rate of citations to the article will then reach some lower level, continuing on accumulating citations at some regular but unimpressive rate. Drawing on data covering the period from 1962 to 2019, I show that Menard was close with respect to the first prediction. But I also show that things are less clear with respect to the second prediction. I explain why the data are less clear with respect to the second prediction.
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Notes
Given the instability of the web record, it is worth noting when I collected the data from Google Scholar. The complete count was done on April 7, 2020.
A referee for Scientometrics encouraged me to include data from a search on Web of Science, the contemporary incarnation of the Science Citation Index. I conducted a search on Web of Science, specifically a Cited Reference Search, using the following terms: CITED AUTHOR: (Hess H OR Hess HH) AND CITED WORK: (Geol* OR Hist* OR Petr*) AND CITED YEAR (1962). I conducted the search on May 11, 2020. I thank the referee for suggesting the precise search terms. An earlier search, using different terms, yielded far fewer citations.
I thank a referee for Scientometrics for urging me to consider this significant technological change. A search on World Cat suggests that only 422 libraries worldwide have a copy of Petrologic Studies, the book in which Hess’ paper is published. My search of Web Cat was conducted on May 5, 2020.
Wray and Bornmann (1987) made their observation with respect to Einstein’s 1905 papers, noting that these are highly cited papers in the philosophy of science literature. I do not mean to exaggerate the number of citations to Hess’ paper from sources in the history and philosophy of science and scientometrics. My search on Web of Science suggests that, collectively, citations in (1) History and Philosophy of Science, (2) Computer Science, and (3) Information Science and Library Science constitute about 7% of the citations to Hess’ article.
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Acknowledgements
K. Brad Wray thanks Lori Nash for assistance with Excel, and a referee for Scientometrics for their thoughtful comments.
Funding
My research is supported by a Grant from the Aarhus Universitets Forskningsfond—Starting Grant, AUFF-E-2017-FLS-7-3
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Wray, K.B. How is a revolutionary scientific paper cited?: the case of Hess’ “History of Ocean Basins”. Scientometrics 124, 1677–1683 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-020-03524-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-020-03524-3