TY  - JOUR
A1  - Heistermann, Maik
A1  - Francke, Till
A1  - Georgi, Christof
A1  - Bronstert, Axel
T1  - Increasing life expectancy of water resources literature
T2  - Water resources research
N2  - In a study from 2008, Lariviere and colleagues showed, for the field of natural sciences and engineering, that the median age of cited references is increasing over time. This result was considered counterintuitive: with the advent of electronic search engines, online journal issues and open access publications, one could have expected that cited literature is becoming younger. That study has motivated us to take a closer look at the changes in the age distribution of references that have been cited in water resources journals since 1965. Not only could we confirm the findings of Lariviere and colleagues. We were also able to show that the aging is mainly happening in the oldest 10-25% of an average reference list. This is consistent with our analysis of top-cited papers in the field of water resources. Rankings based on total citations since 1965 consistently show the dominance of old literature, including text books and research papers in equal shares. For most top-cited old-timers, citations are still growing exponentially. There is strong evidence that most citations are attracted by publications that introduced methods which meanwhile belong to the standard toolset of researchers and practitioners in the field of water resources. Although we think that this trend should not be overinterpreted as a sign of stagnancy, there might be cause for concern regarding how authors select their references. We question the increasing citation of textbook knowledge as it holds the risk that reference lists become overcrowded, and that the readability of papers deteriorates.
Y1  - 2014
UR  - https://publishup.uni-potsdam.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/37784
SN  - 0043-1397
SN  - 1944-7973
VL  - 50
IS  - 6
SP  - 5019
EP  - 5028
PB  - American Geophysical Union
CY  - Washington
ER  -