Do Scientists Directly or Indirectly Cite other Scientists by Reputation?

This plot shows how scientists cite each other by reputation.

A single arc stands for a citation.

Blue arcs mark scientists with higher reputation that cite scientists with a lower reputation and red arcs mark the opposite.

Reputation is here defined by the h-index of a scientist.

This metric is far from perfect, but has significance alone from being used frequently on many science databases.

If we only show the citations with a higher difference between h-indices, we see more red than blue lines.

That means that scientists with a lower h-index cite scientist with a higher h-index more often than the other way around.

If we visualize the opposite: citations with a lower difference between h-indices, we see that most of these citations happen in the lower h-index spectrum.

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