2009 NOBEL PRIZE PREDICTIONS

2009 NOBEL PRIZE PREDICTIONS

What accounts for the predictive power of citations? It is not really that mysterious. Citations in the literature represent repayments of intellectual debts that one researcher pays to another. The social norms and formal publication procedures in science demand that relevant work is acknowledged — and it is considered misconduct not to recognize previous work which a researcher has used in his or her own work. Moreover, these citation links represent a coherent pattern of intellectual connections. In other words, there is much meaning in all those millions of footnotes appended to research reports. The counting of citations, over specific periods and in different fields, can reveal the most highly cited people and papers, and these ranked lists have been shown to contain a large number of scientists who have already won the Nobel Prize (and other prestigious awards) and the names of those who later go on to receive the Nobel Prize.

THE POWER OF CITATIONS