From: Greg Youngen <[email protected]>

Here are the numbers behind my observations of citations to the xxx
eprints.  I originally ran the search in April and have updated it with
another search yesterday (including 1998 citation data).

The process involves isolating the physics & astronomy literature,
counting the total number of citations in this group, and from that
extracting the citations to the eprints.

The numbers have remained pretty consistent over the time period.  Of
course the percentage of eprints will diminish in time as more and more
articles are published citing the print literature.  However, citations to
eprints do represent a significant number of the total citations to the
most current literature.

I have included a number set from our in-house subscription to Science
Citation Index through Web of Science (we only have 1997-98 data) but the
numbers are even more impressive - 9% of the total citations to 1997
literature were to eprints.  I don't understand the discrepancy with WoS
and Dialog since they both use the same data - will check on this with
ISI.

Anyway, I hope these tables transfer OK - I have them on an Excel
spreadsheet if there are any problems.  I'd appreciate any comments or
suggestions for further research in this area. - Greg.

Citations in the Physics & Astronomy Literature
Source: Science Citation Index on Dialog and Web of Science (WoS)

                (April 1998)            (September 1998)
                1995    1996    1997    1995    1996    1997    1998

Physics         143114  84408   28381   168301  110386  51093   7837
Astronomy       20784   13401   5946    24318   17011   9177    2337
Total           163898  97809   34327   192619  127397  60270   10174

Citations to Eprints
Dialog          3328    4351    2161    3585    5301    4395    443
                2%      4%      6%      2%      4%      7%      4%
WoS                                                     5725    613
                                                        9%      6%

DIALOG  9/21/98  - Citations to:
                1995    1996    1997    1998    Total
astro-ph        282     491     439     47      1259
cond-mat        300     587     769     88      1744
gr-qc           240     343     210     27      820
hep-ex          28      56      128     10      222
hep-lat         178     286     257     18      739
hep-ph          843     1307    1095    81      3326
hep-th          1625    1902    1144    129     4800
nucl-ex         10      6       18      1       35
nucl-th         79      157     186     14      436
quant-ph                166     149     28      343
Total           3585    5301    4395    443     13724


WoS     9/21/98 - Citations to:
                1997    1998    Total
astro-ph        594     66      660
cond-mat        1217    106     1323
gr-qc           229     33      262
hep-ex          106     14      120
hep-lat         272     22      294
hep-ph          2648    122     2770
hep-th          257     208     465
nucl-ex         18      1       19
nucl-th         182             182
quant-ph        202     41      243
Total           5725    613     6338

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Greg Youngen
Physics/Astronomy Library                           Phone: 217-244-2096
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign          Fax:   217-333-3207
Urbana, IL 61801                                       [email protected]

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