Citation Chains

Here’s a fun game to play on Google Scholar:

1. Search for a relatively old paper in your field of choice. It will, presumably, be the top result.
2. Note the number N in the “Cited by N” link under the top result’s abstract. Also note the year of publication.
3. Click the “Cited by N” link.
4. GOTO 2.

For example, here’s what results from searching for Luca Cardelli’s paper A polymorphic lambda-calculus with Type : Type:

Paper Name	Pub Date	Cited by <N>	Citations per year
A polymorphic lambda-calculus with Type: Type	1986	72	4
The calculus of constructions	1986	1053	44
A framework for defining logics	1993	1155	68
Proof-carrying code	1997	1873	145
Xen and the art of virtualization	2003	2375	340
Globus toolkit version 4: Software for service-oriented systems	2006	1179	295
A taxonomy of data grids for distributed data sharing, management, and processing	2006	175	88
A toolkit for modelling and simulating data Grids: an extension to GridSim	2008	38	20
Service and utility oriented distributed computing systems […]	2008	11	4

 

It’s sort of nifty to see the “arch” of citations, and citations/year, over time.

Other interesting searches:

• program slicing
• featherweight

Not very interesting:

• grain elevators