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July 14, 2005

Citations =/= Reads, but it's still uncomfortable

Prof. Tom Smith at The Right Coast has this to report about legal scholarship, but the same thing can be said about most of our fields.

This data covers about 385,000 law review articles, notes, comments, etc. etc. that appear in 726 law reviews and journals, and looks at how often they are cited. Cited by other law reviews, or cases.

First of all, 43 percent of the articles are not cited . . . at all. Zero, nada, zilch. Almost 80 percent (i.e. 79 percent) of law review articles get ten or fewer citations. So where are all the citations going? Well, let's look at articles that get more than 100 citations. These are the elite. They make up less than 1 percent of all articles, .898 percent to be precise. They get, is anybody listening out there? 96 percent of all citations to law review articles. That's all. Only 96 percent. Talk about concentration of wealth.

Umm - he points out that the numbers include self-citation.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at July 14, 2005 8:18 AM