Pietro Della Briotta Parolo, Santo Fortunato, Raj Kumar Pan, Kimmo Kaski, Rumi Ghosh and Bernardo Huberman – On the decay of attention in science (Talk at 2nd Annual KNOWeSCAPE Scientific Meeting, http://knowescape.org/knowescape2014-2/)

1. On the decay of attention in Science
On the decay of attention in Science
Pietro della Briotta Parolo 1 Raj Kumar Pan 1 Rumi Ghosh
2 and Bernardo Huberman 3 Kimmo Kaski 1 and Santo
Fortunato 1
1Department of Biomedical Engineering and Computational Science, Aalto
University School of Science, P.O. Box 12200, FI-00076, Finland
2Robert Bosch LLC, Palo Alto, CA 94304, USA
3Social Computing Lab Hewlett Packard Research LabsPalo Alto, California, USA
November 25, 2014

2. On the decay of attention in Science
Motivations
It’s all about the Impact..
Number of publications (left) and citations (right) containing the words
”citation” and ”impact” in their title.

3. On the decay of attention in Science
Motivations
Field Heterogeneity
Field NP cmax hci
Clinical Medicine 10833626 25604 11
Molecular Biology 2849144 296498 24
Chemistry 4565197 134441 14
Physics 5583183 31759 13
Our data is made of all publications (articles and reviews) written
in English until the end of 2010 included in the database of the
Thomson Reuters (TR) Web of Science.

4. On the decay of attention in Science
Analysis
Renormalization
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35
250
200
150
100
50
0
1.0
0.8
0.6
0.4
0.2
0.0
−15 −10 −5 0 5 10 15 20

5. On the decay of attention in Science
Analysis
Renormalization
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35
250
200
150
100
50
0
1.0
0.8
0.6
0.4
0.2
0.0
−15 −10 −5 0 5 10 15 20
eci (t) ci (t)/cmax
i

6. On the decay of attention in Science
Analysis
Renormalization
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35
250
200
150
100
50
0
Renormalized!
1.0
0.8
0.6
0.4
0.2
0.0
Renormalized!
−15 −10 −5 0 5 10 15 20
eci (t) ci (t)/cmax
i

7. On the decay of attention in Science
Analysis
Renormalization
1.0
0.8
0.6
h˜ci
0.4
0.2
0.0
a - Physics b - Biology
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40
Years
1.0
0.8
0.6
h˜ci
0.4
0.2
0.0
a - Physics
b - Biology
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40
Years
1970
1975
1980
1985
1990

8. On the decay of attention in Science
Analysis
Fitting
0 5 10 15 20
Years
1.0
0.9
0.8
h˜ti
0.7
0.6
0.5
0.4

9. On the decay of attention in Science
Analysis
Fitting
0 5 10 15 20
Years
1.0
0.9
0.8
h˜ti
0.7
0.6
0.5
0.4
eci (t) =

10. e exp(−et) +
e
eci (t) =

11. pt−p +
p.

12. On the decay of attention in Science
Analysis
Fitting

13. On the decay of attention in Science
Analysis
Fitting
1500
1000
500
0
F exp
Medicine
71%
Biology
80%
0 500 1000 1500
1500
1000
500
0
F exp
Chemistry
56%
Physics
61%
0 500 1000 1500

14. On the decay of attention in Science
Results
6
5
4
3
2
1
0
P()
Medicine Biology
4.5
4.0
3.5
3.0
2.5
2.0
1.5
1.0
0.5
0.0
0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0
P()
Chemistry
Physics
1970
1975
1980
1985
1990
0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0

15. On the decay of attention in Science
Results
0.6
0.5
0.4
0.3
0.2
0.1
[0-10]%
Medicine
10 = 0.0022
30 = 0.0056
Biology
10 = 0.0029
30 = 0.0044
Chemistry
10 = 0.0054
30 = 0.0138
Physics
10 = 0.0051
30 = 0.0114
0.6
0.5
0.4
0.3
0.2
0.1
1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990
[11-30]%

16. On the decay of attention in Science
Results
0.6
0.5
0.4
0.3
0.2
0.1
[0-10]%
Medicine
10 = 0.0022
30 = 0.0056
Biology
10 = 0.0029
30 = 0.0044
Chemistry
10 = 0.0054
30 = 0.0138
Physics
10 = 0.0051
30 = 0.0114
0.6
0.5
0.4
0.3
0.2
0.1
1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990
[11-30]%
The rate of evo-lution
of is ci-tation
dependent
(and maybe field
too)!

17. On the decay of attention in Science
Results
Renormalizing...again...
0 10 20 30 40
Years
106
105
104
Number of Publications
Medicine, = 0.053
Biology, = 0.055
Chemistry, = 0.052
Physics, = 0.070
Total, = 0.048

18. On the decay of attention in Science
Results
Renormalizing...again...
0 10 20 30 40
Years
106
105
104
Number of Publications
Medicine, = 0.053
Biology, = 0.055
Chemistry, = 0.052
Physics, = 0.070
Total, = 0.048
t
12
i = max{t s.t. eci (t)
12
}

19. On the decay of attention in Science
Results
Renormalizing...again...
0 10 20 30 40
Years
106
105
104
Number of Publications
Medicine, = 0.053
Biology, = 0.055
Chemistry, = 0.052
Physics, = 0.070
Total, = 0.048
t
12
i = max{t s.t. eci (t)
12
}
et
12
i,f =
t
12
Xi
t=tpeak
Nfp
(t) − Nfp
(tpeak)

20. On the decay of attention in Science
Results
Renormalizing...again...
0 10 20 30 40
Years
106
105
104
Number of Publications
Medicine, = 0.053
Biology, = 0.055
Chemistry, = 0.052
Physics, = 0.070
Total, = 0.048
t
12
i = max{t s.t. eci (t)
12
}
et
12
i,f =
t
12
Xi
t=tpeak
Nfp
(t) − Nfp
i i
12
i,f i
12
(tpeak)
14
13
12
11
10
9
8
7
6
5
ht
Medicine
Biology
Chemistry
Physics
1.2
1.0
0.8
0.6
0.4
0.2
1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995
h˜t
×106
Finite Memory Effect?