Internet gives papers long-lasting effect, say Google researchers

Citations of studies that were 10 years old increased by nearly 30 percent from 1990 to 2013, according to Google researchers.

In a study published on Arxiv, the group says that the proportion of citations from work that was published 10 years before the citing paper increased in 89 percent of the 261 subject areas they looked at. They also say their data indicate that the trend is accelerating.

The researchers attribute the rise to the ease of finding papers on the internet: “Now that finding and reading relevant older articles is about as easy as finding and reading recently published articles, significant advances aren’t getting lost on the shelves and are influencing work worldwide for years after.” They say that 36 percent of papers published in 2013 cited research that was a decade old.