New preprint (provocation?)
π"ππ¨ 'πππ' ππ’ππππ’π¨π§π¬ π‘ππ―π 'π π¨π¨π' πππππππ¬?"π
with Misha Teplitskiy
https://arxiv.org/abs/2304.06190
Quick explainerπ https://twitter.com/HonglinB/status/1648382310155448320
When assessing the pros/cons of a policy, behavior, or norm, one compelling approach is to imagine a counterfactual world without it. This exercise reveals that even well-intentioned norms may not always result in positive outcomes #science #innovation #complexsystems #AgentBasedModels #citation #scientometrics #heuristics #mattheweffect
Do "bad" citations have "good" effects?
The scientific community generally discourages authors of research papers from citing papers that did not influence them because such "rhetorical" citations are assumed to degrade the literature and incentives for good work. Intuitively, a world where authors cite only substantively appears attractive. We argue that manding substantive citing may have underappreciated consequences on the allocation of attention and dynamism. We develop a novel agent-based model in which agents cite substantively and rhetorically. Agents first select papers to read based on their expected quality, read them and observe their actual quality, become influenced by those that are sufficiently good, and substantively cite them. Next, agents fill any remaining slots in the reference lists with papers that support their claims, regardless of whether they were actually influential. By turning rhetorical citing on-and-off, we find that rhetorical citing increases the correlation between quality and citations, increases citation churn, and reduces citation inequality. This occurs because rhetorical citing redistributes some citations from a stable set of elite-quality papers to a more dynamic set with high-to-moderate quality and high rhetorical value. Increasing the size of reference lists, often seen as an undesirable trend, amplifies the effects. In sum, rhetorical citing helps deconcentrate attention and makes it easier to displace incumbent ideas, so whether it is indeed undesirable depends on the metrics used to judge desirability.
Almog Simchon
Jennifer Watling Neal
jimi adams
Austin van Loon
Bart Bonikowski