4 ms·

Fields generally doesn't start - they branch off as a specialization of something else. So no, there will be no 0 % unless you go really far back.

• privong 12y ago
  Right, the aside about "starting" was hyperbole. And I purposefully said "approach 0%", not "be 0%". As an example, there are astronomy publications stretching over more than 100 years, which could be used in a study like this. Analyzing the citation data in 10 year bins may be able to see if the increase in citations to "old" papers (> 10 years old at the time of the citation) is due to an increased corpus of papers (the citation fration should rise with time, likely related to the total number of prior papers in existence) or due to improved acess to older papers (the change in the past 10–20 years should be significantly greater than in the previous time bins).
• alephnil 12y ago
  Indeed, and arguably, even if you go really far back, even fields like physics and mathematics spawned out from philosophy. Physics was originally known as "natural philosophy" for example. Biology came into existence independently several places, but often it was considered to be a part of Theology, and a study of Gods creation. Hardly any field except philosophy and theology has started as anything other than a specialization of something else.