Astronomy’s Greatest Hits: The 100 Most Cited Papers in Each Year of the First Decade of the 21st Century (2000–2009)
Astronomy’s Greatest Hits: The 100 Most Cited Papers in Each Year of the First Decade of the 21st Century (2000–2009)
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天文学最热门论文：21 世纪第一个十年（2000-2009 年）每年被引用次数最多的 100 篇论文
DOI：
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发表时间：
2010
期刊：
影响因子：
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通讯作者：
J. Frogel
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
J. Frogel
21世纪的第一个十年和20世纪的最后几年，由于新的观测设施、对数字档案的访问以及使用互联网进行信息交流和传播以及访问档案的增长，地面和空间观测天文学发生了变革。这三个因素是如何影响被评审天文学期刊上发表的论文的特征和内容，以及期刊本身的？在本文和后续的文章中，我将提出这个问题的答案。本文是该系列的第一篇论文，其分析基于对2000年至2009年间天文学和天体物理学领域每年被引用最多的100篇论文（包括1995年至1990年的补充数据）的检查。这项分析的主要发现是：在过去的10年里，排名前100位的文章的作者总数在第一年增加了两倍多。这种增长在作者超过6人的论文中表现得最为明显。在任何一年里，独特作者的数量都增加了一倍多。与此同时，每年只有5个或更少作者的论文数量也在下降。在10年的平均时间里，每篇论文的规范化作者数量随着被引次数的增加而稳步增长——被引次数最多的论文往往拥有最多的作者，反之亦然。这种增长在引用数和作者数排名1到20的论文中尤为明显。标准化引用数与排名的分布每年都非常稳定，除了每年排名靠前的六篇左右的论文外，其他论文的分布都非常接近幂律。几乎所有与幂律最不一致的论文都是基于大规模观察调查的结果——从引用次数高的意义上说，这些论文都与幂律最不一致。在排名前100位的论文中，论文长度与被引排名的相关性虽小但很显著。然而，更令人吃惊的是，排名前100的论文的平均页数是一般天文学论文的1.5倍。从2000年到2008年，这五种期刊占ISI期刊引用报告中“天文学和天体物理学”类别中所有期刊每年总引用量的80%到85%。这些数字不包括《自然》和《科学》。在本文研究的10年时间内平均来看，这5种期刊占被引用最多的1000篇论文的77%，略低于这些期刊在所有期刊发表的文章总数中的分数贡献。这五种期刊分别是A&A、AJ、ApJ、ApJS和MNRAS。前100名被引论文的两个样本，都是2001年至2006年的6年，但相隔2.5年，结果表明，随着时间的推移，有相当数量的文章最初进入了当年的前100名，后来退出，被其他文章所取代。大多数退选的主题是河外天文学；它们的替代品大多涉及非星系外的话题。最后，一些额外的发现被注意到，这些发现与本世纪头十年发表的所有天文学期刊有关。互联网访问天文网站（如数据档案和期刊库）的各种指标显示，其增长幅度在3到10倍之间，甚至更多。我认为，互联网使用带来的通信能力与高被引论文作者数量的强劲增长之间存在密切的互补关系。后续的论文将详细研究这一点以及对本文所提出的分析的其他解释。
The first decade of the 21st century and the last few years of the 20th have been transformative for ground- and space-based observational astronomy due to new observing facilities, access to digital archives, and growth in use of the Internet for communication and dissemination of information and for access to the archives. How have these three factors affected the characteristics and content of papers published in refereed astronomical journals, as well as the journals themselves? In this and subsequent papers I will propose answers to this question. The analysis in this, the first paper of a series, is based on an examination of the 100 most cited papers in astronomy and astrophysics for each year between 2000 and 2009, inclusive, and supplemental data from 1995 and 1990. The main findings of this analysis are: Over the 10 yr period the total number of authors of the top-100 articles year-1 has more than tripled. This increase is seen most strongly in papers with more than six authors. The number of unique authors in any given year has more than doubled. The yearly number of papers with five or fewer authors has declined over the same time period. Averaged over the 10 yr period the normalized number of authors per paper increases steadily with citation rank—the most highly cited papers tend to have the largest number of authors and vice versa. This increase is especially notable for papers ranked 1 through 20 in terms of number of citations and number of authors. The distribution of normalized citation counts versus ranking is remarkably constant from year to year and, except for the top-ranked half-dozen or so papers in each year, is very closely approximated by a power law. Nearly all of the papers that show the most divergence from the power-law fit—all in the sense of having a high number of citations—are based on the results of large observational surveys. Among the top-100 papers there is a small but significant correlation of paper length with citation rank. More striking, though, is that the average page length of the top-100 papers is one and a half times that for astronomy papers in general. For every year from 2000 to 2008, the same five journals account for 80 to 85% of the total citations for each year from all of the journals in the category of “Astronomy and Astrophysics” by ISI’s Journal Citation Reports. These numbers do not include Nature or Science. Averaged over the 10 yr time period studied in this article, these same five journals account for 77% of the 1000 most cited papers, slightly less than the journals’ fractional contribution to the total number of articles published by all journals. The five journals are A&A, AJ, ApJ, ApJS, and MNRAS. Two samples of the top-100 cited papers, both for the 6 yr from 2001 to 2006 but compiled 2.5 yr apart, show that a significant number of articles originally ranked in the top 100 for the year, drop out, and are replaced by other articles as time passes. Most of the dropouts address topics in extragalactic astronomy; their replacements for the most part deal with non-extra-galactic topics. Finally, some additional findings are noted that relate to the entire ensemble of astronomical journals published during the century’s first decade. Various indicators of Internet access to astronomical Web sites such as data archives and journal repositories show increases of between factors of 3 and 10 or more. I propose that there are close complementarities between the communication capabilities that Internet usage enables and the strong growth in numbers of authors of the most highly cited papers. Subsequent papers will examine this and other interpretations of the analysis presented here in detail.