What is wrong with obsolescence?

Abstract

The growth of scientific output in recent years has meant that fewer libraries are able to offer the entire range of journals, with the others being forced to make a selection. The objective of the present work is to describe criteria to regulate the selection of these journals to provide the researcher with the information that is most being used in research. One form of quantifying this information is by way of the citations that papers receive over a period of time following their publication. Obsolescence, expressed in terms of an annual aging factor, does not reflect the real behaviour of most papers. An alternative is the use of “topicality,” considered as a latent variable, with the Rasch model as the measuring instrument. We considered 45 physics journals, and found the results of applying the Rasch model to be more satisfactory than those obtained with the annual aging factor.

Consortial Book Circulation Patterns: The OCLC-OhioLINK Study

“…Alvarez, Escalona, & Pulgarin found that there is "no way to find an aging factor that is time-independent…." 24 Egghe and Egghe and Ravichandra Rao also report similar findings. 25 The observed obsolescence rate for OhioLINK books also did not follow negative exponential behavior.…”

Citation classics published in Knowledge Management journals. Part II: studying research trends and discovering the Google Scholar Effect

“…Obsolescence results in the decline in an academic article's validity, relevance, and use over time, measured using a longitudinal frequency distribution of citations (Line and Sandison, 1974;Egghe, 1992Egghe, , 2010. To understand the obsolescence, researchers use analytical concepts and tools, such as the citation half-life, utility factor, Rasch model and annual aging factor (Burton and Kebler, 1960;Brookes, 1970;Alvarez et al, 2000;Száva-Kováts, 2002). Whereas some topics may become obsolete, others may be stable or even growing.…”

AMCIS 2008 Panel Report: Aging Content on the Web: Issues, Implications, and Potential Research Opportunities

“…The panel discussion crystallized perhaps the most essential question: What does it mean for Web content to be outdated or obsolete? Although obsolescence has been characterized in the information sciences literature as a decline in user perceptions of the usefulness or validity of information [Alvarez et al 2000;Egghe and Rousseau 2000], we noted that there is significant room for interpretation in any determination of obsolescence. For example, research examining obsolescence of the traditional academic literature has frequently been based on the premise that falling citation levels are indicative of both aging and obsolescence [Alvarez et al 2000;Line 1993].…”