Another String Guessing Game! (citations)

[Martin]

How many recent string papers will be highly cited this year? The results won't be known until the final count is done next year. Register your guess now, and we will check on July 4, 2006, a year from now and see who came closest.

 

Like the Good Old (string glory) Days? > 15

End of a slump? around 10

Slump continues? < 5

Down the tubes? 1

 

I will explain how we get the numbers. The way it works is each year Stanford Library publishes a "TopCites" list for High Energy Physics. Particularly interesting or important papers get cited in a lot of other research papers. (Severian has pointed out that this index, like many others, is imperfect.)

 

The Stanford list usually comes out in the Spring of the following year. The TopCites list for 2004 was posted in March 2005. From the Stanford list for 2005, when it appears next year, we are going to pick out the papers that got LOTS of citations----125 or more---and which are RECENT (appeared in the last 5 years).

And we will count the stringy papers.

So we are going to count how many stringy research papers which appeared in the five years 2001-2005, were cited by 125+ papers in 2005.

 

What we are measuring is current citations of recent papers. It gives an way to gauge stringy research activity---how much is being done recently that other string researchers think is interesting and important enough to cite in their own papers, as references.

 

Here's how it worked out in past years.

 

In 1999 there were FIFTEEN highly cited recent string papers.

In 2003 there were FOUR.

In 2004 there were FOUR highly cited recent string papers.

How many do you guess there will be in 2005?

 

Here are some sources

 

 

 

http://www.slac.stanford.edu/library/topcites/2004/annual.shtml'>http://www.slac.stanford.edu/library/topcites/2004/annual.shtml

 

http://www.slac.stanford.edu/library/topcites/

 

http://www.scienceforums.net/forums/showpost.php?p=139425&postcount=18

 

 

Just to be real clear about what we are guessing, what I mean by

"In 1999 there were FIFTEEN highly cited recent string papers" is this.

You look at the Stanford TopCite list for 1999 and you focus only on papers that in 1999 garnered 125+ citations from other scholars (that were a "hit" with other scholars) and among those you look at only ones that are stringy (you excluded all the non-string papers) and among those "hit" stringy papers you count how many RECENT ones, ie. that appeared in the past 5 years, namely 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999.

 

And to repeat what i said earlier, the number we are guessing is this: in March 2006, or May or whenever, when Stanford brings out its TopCites list for 2005, we will count how many recent stringy papers (from 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005) were cited 125 or more times in the research literature that appeared in 2005.

 

What's it going to be:

 

Like the Good Old (string glory) Days? > 15

End of a slump? around 10

Slump continues? < 5

Down the tubes? 1

[Martin]

thinking about these things reminded me of something Brian Greene said that I respect him a lot for.

 

It was quoted in the NY Times of 7 December 2004, and I have a link to somebody's blog that quotes it.

 

Brian Greene is going to be giving the perspective talk on string theory at the big "Einstein2005" conference this month in Paris. Maybe he will give a realistic note to what he has to say, not always easy.

If you want the online text go to

http://pmbryant.typepad.com/b_and_b/2004/12/index.html

and scroll down to the blog entries, and scroll down to 7 December.

 

Anyway here it is. It's part of a long article in the 7 December New York Times Science section, by NYT science writer Dennis Overbye:

String theory, at 20, explains everything (not)

 

Overbye was reporting an Aspen conference celebrating string revolution 20th birthday. The last paragraph described the closing words of the conference: a summary by Stephen Shenker, with comment from the audience by Brian Greene.

 

---quote----

 

...Dr. Shenker said it would be great to find out that string theory was right.

 

From the audience Dr. Greene piped up, "Wouldn't it be great either way?"

 

"Are you kidding me, Brian?" Dr. Shenker responded. "How many years have you sweated on this?"

 

But if string theory is wrong, Dr. Greene argued, wouldn't it be good to know so physics could move on? "Don't you want to know?" he asked.

 

Dr. Shenker amended his remarks. "It would be great to have an answer," he said, adding, "It would be even better if it's the right one."

----endquote---

Here's an alternate link to Bryant's blog that has the text

http://pmbryant.typepad.com/b_and_b/2004/12/string_theory_d.html

[Dave]

Whilst I don't think that string theory has completely gone down the tubes yet, I have to say that I feel that it's starting to get that way. My vote, for what it's worth, is in the "Slump Continues" category.

[Martin]

Whilst I don't think that string theory has completely gone down the tubes yet, I have to say that I feel that it's starting to get that way. My vote, for what it's worth, is in the "Slump Continues" category.

 

mine too, dave.

I hope we get some difference of opinion!

It would make it much more interesting if some SFN posters would

go on record as seeing things in a more string-hopeful light