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Amazing. This got me thinking about citation counts. The most cited paper in Computer Science of all time is Vapnik's Statistical Learning Theory (1998) with ab

Amazing. This got me thinking about citation counts. The most cited paper in Computer Science of all time is Vapnik's Statistical Learning Theory (1998) with about 10k citations. The most cited paper of any kind of all time is Protein measurement with the folin phenol reagent by Lowry et al. (1951) with > 300k citations. There's a big time gap here, but not big enough to make up for a > 290k difference in citations. I always thought that CS was one of the more prolific paper writing communities, clearly not the case. PS. I'm not sure which paper in the arXiv has the greatest number of citations. I don't think either of these papers are there.

nmrm2 11y ago
In CS it's customary to stop citing papers at some point. E.g., lots of papers are published about Turing machines without citing Turing. Also, absolute limitations on page count is really common in CS, and the page counts tend to be pretty low. In other areas, journals might allow for more citations or citations might not count toward page count. Also, arxiv is physics-biased.
- nl 11y ago
  Also, arxiv is physics-biased. Have there been any significant CS papers published in the last ~5 years that aren't on Arxiv? The last thing I remember not being there was a set of papers on IBM Watson that were published in an IBM Systems Engineering Journal. I have a feeling that some papers out of Microsoft tend not to end up there too, but I can't think of a specific example.
  - lazaroclapp 11y ago
    > Have there been any significant CS papers published in the last ~5 years that aren't on Arxiv? Even if not, there might be insignificant CS papers not indexed by Arxiv which cite significant papers which are indexed ;) This makes the citation counts comparatively lower if most insignificant physics papers are in Arxiv. That said, it doesn't surprise me much that worldwide there are still more people working in physics, biology or mathematics than in CS.
LukeShu 11y ago
That line of reasoning isn't convincing to me (though I have no data to confirm or deny it); CS could still be a more prolific paper writing community, just that papers compete more for citations. In CS if I want to cite something, I have my choice of 10 papers from the same era from roughly the same group of people saying roughly the same thing (some might prefer to cite earlier papers, as the "original", others might prefer later papers as the ideas are more clarified). In other fields, there might be one "standard" paper to cite for a era/topic/group.
- mrdrozdov 11y ago
  Couldn't you say the same about other fields? Although I understand where you are coming from. If I wanted to make a more accurate comparison it'd only be fair to examine the distributions of different fields as well as their top performers, but I still think that is too huge a gap to make up for anything besides some heavily skewed distributions.
  - LukeShu 11y ago
    Definitely! I don't have the breadth of experience or data to really judge how it compares from CS to other fields.
danharaj 11y ago
It was my understanding that CS is more of a conference-going community rather than a paper-writing community.
- seccess 11y ago
  It is true that CS is more conference-oriented, however most top conferences require that a paper be submitted, reviewed, and (if accepted) published in the conference proceedings before you can present your work there. This does vary by discipline though: algs/theory is more traditional journal oriented, I believe.
- tormeh 11y ago
  Yeah, I'd say ACM proceedings are where most of the good papers are published.
ichamo 11y ago
Google scholar says closer to 50k citations. Where did you get your information from?
- mrdrozdov 11y ago
  Thanks for the heads up. I found 38k citations for The Nature of Statistical Learning Theory: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cluster=8608559880368280977&hl=en&as_sdt=5,33&sciodt=0,33 https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cluster=86085598803682809... And 25k for Statistical Learning Theory: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cluster=8674855497178165557&hl=en&as_sdt=5,33&sciodt=0,33 https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cluster=86748554971781655... My initial estimation of 10k was from a CiteSeer list that I didn't realize was limited to only documents in the CiteSeer database: http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/stats/articles http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/stats/articles

nmrm2 11y ago

In CS it's customary to stop citing papers at some point. E.g., lots of papers are published about Turing machines without citing Turing. Also, absolute limitations on page count is really common in CS, and the page counts tend to be pretty low. In other areas, journals might allow for more citations or citations might not count toward page count. Also, arxiv is physics-biased.

nl 11y ago
Also, arxiv is physics-biased. Have there been any significant CS papers published in the last ~5 years that aren't on Arxiv? The last thing I remember not being there was a set of papers on IBM Watson that were published in an IBM Systems Engineering Journal. I have a feeling that some papers out of Microsoft tend not to end up there too, but I can't think of a specific example.
- lazaroclapp 11y ago
  > Have there been any significant CS papers published in the last ~5 years that aren't on Arxiv? Even if not, there might be insignificant CS papers not indexed by Arxiv which cite significant papers which are indexed ;) This makes the citation counts comparatively lower if most insignificant physics papers are in Arxiv. That said, it doesn't surprise me much that worldwide there are still more people working in physics, biology or mathematics than in CS.

LukeShu 11y ago

That line of reasoning isn't convincing to me (though I have no data to confirm or deny it); CS could still be a more prolific paper writing community, just that papers compete more for citations. In CS if I want to cite something, I have my choice of 10 papers from the same era from roughly the same group of people saying roughly the same thing (some might prefer to cite earlier papers, as the "original", others might prefer later papers as the ideas are more clarified). In other fields, there might be one "standard" paper to cite for a era/topic/group.

mrdrozdov 11y ago
Couldn't you say the same about other fields? Although I understand where you are coming from. If I wanted to make a more accurate comparison it'd only be fair to examine the distributions of different fields as well as their top performers, but I still think that is too huge a gap to make up for anything besides some heavily skewed distributions.
- LukeShu 11y ago
  Definitely! I don't have the breadth of experience or data to really judge how it compares from CS to other fields.

danharaj 11y ago

It was my understanding that CS is more of a conference-going community rather than a paper-writing community.

seccess 11y ago
It is true that CS is more conference-oriented, however most top conferences require that a paper be submitted, reviewed, and (if accepted) published in the conference proceedings before you can present your work there. This does vary by discipline though: algs/theory is more traditional journal oriented, I believe.
tormeh 11y ago
Yeah, I'd say ACM proceedings are where most of the good papers are published.

ichamo 11y ago

Google scholar says closer to 50k citations. Where did you get your information from?

mrdrozdov 11y ago
Thanks for the heads up. I found 38k citations for The Nature of Statistical Learning Theory: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cluster=8608559880368280977&hl=en&as_sdt=5,33&sciodt=0,33 https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cluster=86085598803682809... And 25k for Statistical Learning Theory: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cluster=8674855497178165557&hl=en&as_sdt=5,33&sciodt=0,33 https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cluster=86748554971781655... My initial estimation of 10k was from a CiteSeer list that I didn't realize was limited to only documents in the CiteSeer database: http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/stats/articles http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/stats/articles