Solo citations, duet citations, and prelude citations: New measures of the disruption of academic papers

Abstract: It is important to measure the disruption of academic papers. According to the characteristics of three different kinds of citations, this paper borrows musical vocabulary and names them solo citations (SC), duet citations (DC), and prelude citations (PC) respectively. Studying how to measure the disruption of a published work effectively, this study analyzes nine indicators and suggests a general evaluation formula. Seven of the nine indicators are innovations introduced by this paper: SC, SC-DC, SC-PC, SC-DC-PC, (SC-DC)/(SC+DC), (SC-PC)/(SC+DC), and (SC-DC-PC)/(SC+DC), as is the general formula. These indices are discussed considering two cases: One case concerns the Citation Indexes for Science and the other concerns Co-citations. The results show that, compared with other indicators, four indicators (SC, SC-DC, SC/(SC+DC), and (SC-DC)/(SC+DC)) are logically and empirically reasonable. Future research may consider combining these indices, for example, using SC multiplied by SC/(SC+DC) or SC-DC multiplied by (SC-DC)/(SC+DC), to get final evaluation results that contain desirable characteristics of two types of indicators. Confirming which of the evaluation results from these indicators can best reflect the innovation of research papers requires much empirical analysis.