The changing role of cited papers over time: An analysis of highly cited papers based on a large full-text dataset

2025-09-04

AI Summary

This study investigates the dynamic evolution of highly cited papers (HCPs) in their citing roles across successive research over time. Method: Leveraging a corpus of nearly 900 HCPs and over 220,000 full-text citing documents, we construct a multidimensional citation analysis framework integrating citation position, frequency, type, sentiment polarity, semantic similarity, and bibliographic coupling. Contribution/Results: We find that as HCPs age, citations to them shift toward earlier positions in citing papers, decrease in frequency, strengthen co-citation ties, and weaken semantic associations—indicating a functional transition from direct methodological or topical application toward background contextualization and symbolic citation. This work provides the first systematic empirical characterization of the citation lifecycle, moving beyond conventional citation counting paradigms. It establishes a novel analytical framework for fine-grained assessment of scientific impact, enhances scholarly search optimization, and advances citation analysis theory with robust empirical grounding.

Technology Category

• Natural Language Processing: Sentiment Analysis, Stylistic Analysis, and Argument Mining
• Cognitive Modeling & Cognitive Systems: Conceptual Inference and Reasoning
• Application Domains: Humanities & Computational Social Science

Application Category

• Web Mining and Content Analysis: Models for Web evolution
• Graph Algorithms and Modeling for the Web: Algorithms and analysis for heterogeneous, signed, attributed, multi-relational, temporal, higher-order, and annotated Web-related graphs
• Social Networks and Social Media: Computational social science

Abstract

This paper examines how the role of cited papers evolves over time by analyzing nearly 900 highly cited papers (HCPs) published between 2000 and 2016 and the full text of over 220,000 papers citing them. We investigate multiple citation characteristics, including citation location within the full text, reference and in-text citation types, citation sentiment, and textual and bibliographic relatedness between citing and cited papers. Our findings reveal that as HCPs age, they tend to be cited earlier in papers citing them, mentioned fewer times in the full text, and more often cited alongside other references. Citation sentiment remains predominantly neutral, while both textual and bibliographic similarity between HCPs and their citing papers decline over time. These patterns indicate a shift from direct topical and methodological engagement toward more general, background, and symbolic referencing. The findings highlight the importance to consider citation context rather than relying solely on simple citation counts. Large-scale full-text analyses such as ours can help refine measures of scientific impact and advance scholarly search and science mapping by uncovering more nuanced connections between papers.

Problem

• Analyzing evolution of cited papers' roles over time
• Investigating citation characteristics in full-text context
• Understanding shift from topical to symbolic referencing

Innovation

• Analyzed citation location and sentiment in full-text
• Used large-scale dataset of 220000 citing papers
• Measured textual and bibliographic relatedness between papers