Exploring the dynamics of journal citations: Modelling with s-curves

1 This paper reports on an exploratory analysis of the behaviour of citations, i.e., pattern of obsolescence, for management science papers over a fourteen year period. It addresses three questions: i) can collections of papers from the same journal all be modelled using the same obsolescence function? ii) Can we identify specific patterns of behaviour such as " sleeping beauties " or " shooting stars " ? iii) Can we predict the number of future citations from the pattern of behaviour in the first few years? Over 600 papers published in six leading journals are analysed using a variety of s-curves.