Is scientific literature subject to a 'sell-by-date'? A general methodology to analyze the 'durability' of scientific documents

The study of the citation histories and ageing of documents are topics that have been addressed from several perspectives, especially in the analysis of documents with "delayed recognition" or "sleeping beauties." However, there is no general methodology that can be extensively applied for different time periods or research fields. In this article, a new methodology for the general analysis of the ageing and "durability" of scientific papers is presented. This methodology classifies documents into three general types: delayed documents, which receive the main part of their citations later than normal documents; flashes in the pan, which receive citations immediately after their publication but are not cited in the long term; and normal documents, documents with a typical distribution of citations over time. These three types of durability have been analyzed considering the whole population of documents in the Web of Science with at least 5 external citations (i.e., not considering self-citations). Several patterns related to the three types of durability have been found and the potential for further research of the developed methodology is discussed. © 2009 ASIS&T.