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M. V. Simkin, V. P. Roychowdhury

cond-mat.dis-nnarXiv:cond-mat/0212043

Abstract

We report a method of estimating what percentage of people who cited a paper had actually read it. The method is based on a stochastic modeling of the citation process that explains empirical studies of misprint distributions in citations (which we show follows a Zipf law). Our estimate is only about 20% of citers read the original.

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