Citation as a Representation Process

Abstract

The presented work proposes a novel approach to model the citation rate. The paper begins with a brief introduction into informetrics studies and highlights drawbacks of the contemporary approaches to modeling the citation process as a product of social interactions. An alternative modeling framework based on results obtained in cognitive psychology is then introduced and applied in an experiment to investigate properties of the citation process, as they are revealed by a large collection of citation statistics. Major research findings are discussed, and a summary is given.