Assessing scientific research by 'citation wake' detects Nobel laureates' papers

(Phys.org)—Ranking scientific papers in order of importance is an inherently subjective task, yet that doesn't keep researchers from trying to develop quantitative assessments. In a new paper, scientists have proposed a new measure of assessment that is based on the "citation wake" of a paper, which encompasses the direct citations and weighted indirect citations received by the paper. The new method attempts to focus on the propagation of ideas rather than credit distribution, and succeeds by