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Source: SPIRES database |
Big jump needed to be top-cited
In the realm of the top-cited papers in particle physics, life is indeed lonely at the top. Since 1951, only 45 particle physics research papers have climbed to the level of 2000 or more citations; and of those 45, only three—for a ratio of one in 15—have reached the pinnacle of 4000 or more citations.
In fact, that last part of the climb is the hardest of all. The second-hardest step is getting the first 50 citations. The SPIRES database lists some 235,000 papers that have received fewer than 50 citations; only 16,643 crossed the threshold of 50, a ratio of one in 14. The ascent from 50 to 2000 was a relatively easy climb, with the ratio ranging from 1 in 1.8 (50+ to 100+) to 1 in 4.7 (250+ to 500+).
The three most highly-cited papers are Steven Weinberg's 1967 "Model of Leptons" (Phys. Rev. Lett. 19 1264 (1967), 4602 citations); Makoto Kobayashi and Toshihide Maskawa's 1973 "CP-Violation in the Renormalizable Theory of Weak Interaction" (Prog. Theor. Phys., Vol. 49 No. 2 (1973), 2792 citations); and Juan Maldacena's "Large N Limit of Superconformal Field Theories and Supergravity" (Adv. Theor. Math. Phys. 2 231-252 (1998), 4064 citations), which received all of its citations in less than 8 years.
Peak publication periods for papers in the 2000+ range are 1998–99, with 12; and 1973–74, with seven. In 1998–99, the 12 papers span a wide range of interests, from theoretical papers on strings and extra dimensions (small and large), to experimental papers on cos-mology and neutrino oscillations. The 1973–74 period featured all seven top-cited papers on theory papers of the electroweak and strong interactions, which laid the groundwork for the Standard Model.
Heath O'Connell, Fermilab
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