A theoretical model of scientific impact based on citations

Number of citations is a basic bibliometric index for evaluating academic articles and assessing researchers, research groups, institutions, and journals. It has several derivative indices which typically assume all citations to have the same importance. Recent research has shown that this is not always true. In this paper, a theoretical relationship between the scientific impact of a research paper and the citations it receives is established. The mathematical model considers the following factors: the number of citations it has received, the role it plays in the papers citing it, and the scientific impact of the papers citing it. This theoretical model depends on the citation matrix and a content-based citation analysis. Limited by current technology, a simplified model referring to normalized citation is provided. The paper further discusses how to apply the method to estimate the scientific impact of researchers, research groups, institutions, and journals. The intended future work for this model is also presented.