INTRODUCTION: WRITING ABOUT TWENTIETH CENTURY GEOLOGY

Abstract

Extract In a classic paper by the late Yale historian of science, Derek De Solla Price (1965), based mainly on the study of citations in a single scientific research field, it was shown how citations in a developing research area have a strong ‘immediacy effect’. Citation was found to be at a maximum for papers about two-and-a-half years old, and the ‘major work of a paper … [is] finished after 10 years’, as judged by citations. There were, however, some ‘classic’ papers that continue to be cited over long periods of time, and review papers specifically discussing the earlier literature. There appears to be a need for such review papers after the publication of about thirty to forty research papers in a field. And the knowledge is synthesized in book form from time to time. De Solla Price saw citations as the means whereby activities at the research front are linked to what has gone before. He wrote: [E]ach group of new papers is ‘knitted’ to a small select part of the existing scientific literature but connected rather weakly and randomly to a much greater part. Since only a small part of the earlier literature is knitted together by the new year’s crop of papers, we may look upon this small part as a sort of growing tip or epidermal layer, an active research front. He continued: The total research front has never … been a single row of knitting. It is, instead, divided by dropped stitches into quite small segments and ...