Beisert v. Seifert citations race, and other signs of the times

[marcus]

I suspect that the most influential string research will now tend to be done in places where there is a strong nonstring quantum gravity group---so string and nonstring QG people share offices, meet at seminars and at coffeeroom etc. Places where string and nonstring research are on more or less equal footing---and where graduate students have a choice---are Potsdam, Utrecht, Perimeter, and Penn State. That's my hunch. So let's TEST the idea with a little race. Let's take two stringy papers published in 2007 and watch their citation counts.

On the 'mixed-bet' side, here is one published in Journal of Statistical Mechanics in 2007 and was by some Potsdam and Utrecht folks
http://www.citebase.org/abstract?id=oai:arXiv.org:hep-th/0610251
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/find/hep/www?eprint=hep-th/0610251
The authors are Beisert, Eden, and Staudacher.

On the 'monopoly' side, here is one that a string grad student recently told me could be the first "field-changing" paper since Maldacena 1998. It came out in Journal of HEP in 2007 and is by some Princeton and Harvard folks.
http://www.citebase.org/abstract?id=oai:arXiv.org:hep-th/0703281
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/find/hep/www?eprint=hep-th/0703281
The authors are Intriligator, Seifert, and Shih.

To start them off more or less equal, let's only count citations since the beginning of 2007.

If anyone has some other stringy paper published in 2007 that you think we should watch, from either a 'mixed' or a 'monopoly' department, let me know. My idea, that I want to test in a roughandready informal way, is that nonstring QG people are good for stringies to be around probably because it helps keep them in touch with reality and the classic priorities of empirical science (but there might be other reasons I haven't thought of).

There are also some other signs of the times we could be watching as well, but here's one for starters.
These are just informal indicators and don't rigorously prove anything, but they could serve as straws in the wind.

Beisert started the year with a dozen or so cites, so I'll determine that and deduct it from their count---only want to tally cites since start of 2007.

 

[marcus]

Beisert et al have established an early lead.
I am giving them a handicap by subtracting 23 off their cites, to compensate for their getting an earlier start. With that adjustment their current figure of 79 citations becomes 79-23 = 56

The reason for that adjustment is that Seifert et al didn't post on arxiv until March and the first papers citing it only posted in April.
In the time up thru March, Beisert had already accumulated 23 cites. So to make it an even race, those don't count. In both cases we will only count cites by papers that posted starting April 2007.

But even with that adjustment, Beisert et al has more than twice as many cites as Seifert at the present time. Both numbers are growing so if you want to look to see what the totals are at any time just compare these two links:

For Beisert, Eden and Staudacher
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/find/hep/www?eprint=hep-th/0610251

For Seifert, Intriligator, and Shih
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/find/hep/www?eprint=hep-th/0703281

============================
so in this little race we are playing Potsdam and Utrecht against Princeton and Harvard.
Potsdam and Utrecht, places where they support multiple approaches to unification and QG,
versus Princeton and Harvard, which have string monoculture. We'll see where the creativity is, going forward.

where paper originated              cites starting April 2007
Potsdam Utrecht (multi-approach)     57
Princeton Harvard (monoculture)      23

obviously this is is not a serious study---at best just a straw in the wind---and wouldn't prove anything either way.
I just have a hunch that the research climate is changing in unification/QG----maybe later we can find some more substantive indicators

 

[marcus]

I just realized a way we could make the contest more sporting. Seifert Intriligator and Shih have an earlier paper from February 2006, on the same topic. We could truncate any citations it got before April 2007, as we did in the BES case, so as to start them all out equal, and then put that previous-SIS paper in the race too. Starting April 2007 it has acquired 73, which is really quite good performance (this is deducting the 77 from before.)

For Beisert, Eden and Staudacher
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/find/hep/www?eprint=hep-th/0610251

For Seifert, Intriligator, and Shih
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/find/hep/www?eprint=hep-th/0703281

For previous-Seifert, Intrilligator, and Shih
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/find/hep/www?rawcmd=FIND+EPRINT+HEP-TH/0602239

============================
So we are running Potsdam and Utrecht against two entries from Princeton and Harvard.

paper                                 cites starting April 2007
BES (from multi-approach Potsdam/Utrecht)     57
SIS (from monoculture Princeton/Harvard)      23
previous SIS                                  73

What got me wondering about the difference in research climate--and possible effects on the value and kind of creativity--was Hermann Nicolai's recent overview article in NATURE. There's a discussion thread, if you want a link to it or to get the gist.
https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=192464
Nicolai directs the unification theory wing of MPI-Potsdam and he seems to have an overview where "SUSY-breaking metastable vacua", what the SIS paper is concerned with, would not necessarily be as important as getting some realworld results along the BES lines. There seems to be a difference in viewpoint that we don't often mention.